Abstract
Members of the Anopheles gambiae species complex are primary vectors of human malaria in Africa. Population heterogeneities for ecological and behavioral attributes expand and stabilize malaria transmission over space and time, and populations may change in response to vector control, urbanization and other factors. There is a need for approaches to comprehensively describe the structure and characteristics of a sympatric local mosquito population, because incomplete knowledge of vector population composition may hinder control efforts. To this end, we used a genome-wide custom SNP typing array to analyze a population collection from a single geographic region in West Africa. The combination of sample depth (n = 456) and marker density (n = 1536) unambiguously resolved population subgroups, which were also compared for their relative susceptibility to natural genotypes of Plasmodium falciparum malaria. The population subgroups display fluctuating patterns of differentiation or sharing across the genome. Analysis of linkage disequilibrium identified 19 new candidate genes for association with underlying population divergence between sister taxa, A. coluzzii (M-form) and A. gambiae (S-form).
Highlights
Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, members of the Anopheles gambiae species complex are primary vectors of the human malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, which is responsible for extensive human morbidity and mortality
Genotypes generated by the uniformly-spaced genome-wide marker set revealed four distinct clusters when analyzed by principal component analysis (PCA)
The stability of the PCA results indicates that identification of major subgroups for this local population is comprehensive, and that it is unlikely that other major genome wide subdivision is present in the population sample
Summary
Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, members of the Anopheles gambiae species complex are primary vectors of the human malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, which is responsible for extensive human morbidity and mortality. Heterogeneity within the A. gambiae complex for ecological preference, feeding behavior, and Plasmodium susceptibility stabilize and expand the malaria vectorial system in nature [1, 2]. Phenotypic differences for these traits can vary between population subgroups or among individuals within a subgroup, and are influenced by genetic variation [3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript
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