Abstract
Aedes albopictus is a native mosquito to Southeast Asia with a high potential for disease transmission. Understanding how Ae. albopictus populations that develop in the species’ native range is useful for planning future control strategies and for identifying the sources of invasive ranges. The present study aims to investigate the genetic diversity and population structure of Ae. albopictus across various climatic regions of Vietnam. We analyzed mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I (COI) gene sequences from specimens collected from 16 localities, and we used distance-based redundancy analysis to evaluate the amount of variation in the genetic distance that could be explained by both geographic distance and climatic factors. High levels of genetic polymorphism were detected, and the haplotypes were similar to those sequences from both temperate and tropical regions worldwide. Of note, these haplotype groups were geographically distributed, resulting in a distinct population structure in which northeastern populations and the remaining populations were genetically differentiated. Notably, genetic variation among the Ae. albopictus populations was driven primarily by climatic factors (64.55%) and to a lesser extent was also influenced by geographic distance (33.73%). These findings fill important gaps in the current understanding of the population genetics of Ae. albopictus in Vietnam, especially with respect to providing data to track the origin of the invaded regions worldwide.
Highlights
Within its native range of Southeast Asia, the Asian tiger mosquito Aedes albopictus (Skuse, 1894) is a tree hole-dwelling zoophilic species [1]
From June to October 2019, mosquito specimens were collected from 16 sites that were distributed across a north–south transect in Vietnam (Figure 1A, Table S1) and that were associated with seven climatic regions: northwest (NW), northeast (NE), north delta (ND), north central coast (NC), south central coast (SC), central highlands (CH), and the south (S) [24]
cytochrome oxidase I (COI) sequences were generated for a total of 236 Ae. albopictus specimens in 16 localities in Vietnam (Table 1 and Table S1)
Summary
Within its native range of Southeast Asia, the Asian tiger mosquito Aedes albopictus (Skuse, 1894) is a tree hole-dwelling zoophilic species [1]. During the last few decades, the species has rapidly expanded into a variety of ecological niches in both tropical and temperate regions of the Americas, Africa, and Europe [2], facilitated mainly by international trade and travel [3,4]. The capacity for photoperiodic diapause is only found in Ae. albopictus populations in temperate regions, while tropical populations are active all year round [6,7]. Several population genetic studies have suggested the existence of genetic differentiation between distant temperate and tropical populations [8–11], it remains unclear whether the two groups are genetically differentiated in the species’ native range. Even though many studies have investigated the population genetics of Ae. albopictus, few have included samples from the species’
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