# RDA-PSO: A Computational Method to Quantify the Diffusive Dispersal of Insects

## TL;DR

The paper introduces RDA-PSO, a new method to estimate insect dispersal in field experiments, which is reliable even with low data.

## Contribution

RDA-PSO is a novel computational method for quantifying insect dispersal that is robust to low recapture rates and uneven site distributions.

## Key findings

- RDA-PSO outperforms three diffusion equation-based methods in estimating the diffusion coefficient from synthetic data.
- The method reliably quantifies insect dispersal without requiring area corrections.
- Applications to real data on yellow fever mosquitoes demonstrate its practical utility.

## Abstract

This article introduces a computational method, called Recapture of Diffusive Agents & Particle Swarm Optimization (RDA-PSO), designed to estimate the dispersal parameter of diffusive insects in mark-release-recapture (MRR) field experiments. In addition to describing the method, its properties are discussed, with particular focus on robustness in estimating the observed diffusion coefficient in the presence of uncertainty. It is shown that RDA-PSO provides a simple and reliable approach to quantify insect dispersal that can handle low recapture rates and uneven capture site distributions without the need for area corrections. Tests on synthetic data, for which the actual diffusion coefficient is known, show the method outperforms three techniques based on the solution of the diffusion equation, which are also introduced in this work. Examples of application to real field data for the yellow fever mosquito are provided.