Abstract
Dengue is a highly endemic disease in Southeast Asia and is transmitted primarily by the mosquito, Aedes aegypti. The National Capital Region (NCR) of the Philippines, or Metropolitan Manila, is a highly urbanized area that is greatly affected by this arboviral disease. Urbanization has been shown to increase the dispersal of this mosquito vector. For this reason, we conducted a fine-scale population genetic study of Ae. aegypti in this region. We collected adult Ae. aegypti mosquitoes (n = 526 individuals) within the region (n = 21 study areas) and characterized the present population structure and the genetic relatedness among mosquito populations. We genotyped 11 microsatellite loci from all sampled mosquito individuals and analyzed their genetic diversity, differentiation and structure. The results revealed low genetic differentiation across mosquito populations which suggest high gene flow and/or weak genetic drift among mosquito populations. Bayesian analysis indicated multiple genetic structures (K = 3–6), with no clear genetically distinct population structures. This result implies the passive or long-distance dispersal capability nature Ae. aegypti possibly through human-mediated transportation. The constructed dendrogram in this study describes the potential passive dispersal patterns across Metropolitan Manila. Furthermore, spatial autocorrelation analysis showed the limited and active dispersal capability (<1km) of the mosquito vector. Our findings are consistent with previous studies that investigated the genetic structure and dual (active and passive) dispersal capability of Ae. aegypti in a fine-scale highly urbanized area.
Highlights
Dengue disease is the most prevalent mosquito-borne viral infection in tropical and subtropical countries [1] with approximately 2.5 billion people at risk of contracting the disease worldwide [2]
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript
The National Capital Region (NCR), known as Metropolitan Manila, is one of the main areas affected by the disease and an average of 16% of the total number of cases reported in the Philippines from 2009 to 2014 [4]
Summary
Dengue disease is the most prevalent mosquito-borne viral infection in tropical and subtropical countries [1] with approximately 2.5 billion people at risk of contracting the disease worldwide [2]. A dengue vaccine is available [6], the World Health Organization [2] still recommends disease prevention and control towards the mosquito vector. The transmission of this arboviral disease is through the bite of either the Aedes aegypti or Ae. albopictus mosquito vector. The former is identified as the primary vector of the disease, and as such, its biology has been extensively studied including its reproduction and development [7,8,9], survivability [10,11], dispersal [12,13,14], and ecology[15,16]. Molecular genotyping of the mosquito vector using these markers has shown additional insights towards the microevolution of the mosquito vector [17,18,19], revealing the population’s gene flow pattern which can be interpreted as the mosquito vector’s dispersal ability [20,24]
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