Model selection results for models of increasing complexity.

The table details the structure of the joint-likelihood models and their corresponding within-sample predictive accuracy assessed on Watanabe-Akaike Information Criterion (WAIC) values. Best models were selected based on minimising WAIC while adhering to model assumptions. Out-of-sample predictive accuracy was compared using mean absolute error (MAE) statistic for random cross validation. Fixed effects included two-month lagged precipitation, proportion of land under agricultural use in 1km radius and district-level measures for annual number of rice crops and total rice area cultivated and rice produced per year. Mean temperature was included as a second-order random walk function to represent the nonlinear relationship between temperature and vector population dynamics. Non-environmental effects considered were for month (M) and state-level spatial (ST) effects specified as a BYM model and study-level (S) random effects.