Genetic structure of the white‐footed mouse in the context of the emergence of Lyme disease in southern Québec

Anita Rogic,Pierre Legendre,Nathalie Tessier,Virginie Millien,François‐Joseph Lapointe

doi:10.1002/ece3.620

Anita Rogic, Pierre Legendre + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.620

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Abstract

The white-footed mouse (Peromyscus leucopus) has expanded its northern limit into southern Québec over the last few decades. P. leucopus is a great disperser and colonizer and is of particular interest because it is considered a primary reservoir for the spirochete bacterium that causes Lyme disease. There is no current information on the gene flow between mouse populations on the mountains and forest fragments found scattered throughout the Montérégie region in southern Québec, and whether various landscape barriers have an effect on their dispersal. We conducted a population genetics analysis on eleven P. leucopus populations using eleven microsatellite markers and showed that isolation by distance was weak, yet barriers were effective. The agricultural matrix had the least effect on gene flow, whereas highways and main rivers were effective barriers. The abundance of ticks collected from mice varied within the study area. Both ticks and mice were screened for the presence of the spirochete bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi, and we predicted areas of greater risk for Lyme disease. Merging our results with ongoing Lyme disease surveillance programs will help determine the future threat of this disease in Québec, and will contribute toward disease prevention and management strategies throughout fragmented landscapes in southern Canada.

Highlights

In the 1970’s, an outbreak of what was believed to be juvenile rheumatoid arthritis in Lyme, Connecticut (USA) led to the discovery of Borrelia burgdorferi, the spirochete bacterium responsible for Lyme disease in humans
Our population genetic analysis revealed that this hypothesis did not hold and that the mice in the Montérégie were, to some degree, structured in space
The remaining variability in our data was largely due to the number of landscape barriers between our populations as well as the barrier effect of the largest water body found in our study area, the Richelieu River

Summary

Introduction

In the 1970’s, an outbreak of what was believed to be juvenile rheumatoid arthritis in Lyme, Connecticut (USA) led to the discovery of Borrelia burgdorferi, the spirochete bacterium responsible for Lyme disease in humans. If left untreated, this disease has shown to have a number of debilitating side effects (Stanek et al, 2002). The white-footed mouse (Peromyscus leucopus) is considered to have the highest reservoir competence, infecting 75-95% of the larval ticks that feed on them (Mather et al, 1989; Ostfeld, 2011). They harbor the bacteria throughout the year with the number of infected mice increasing during the month of June (Anderson et al, 1987)

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