Abstract
Although Aedes fluviatilis is an anthropophilic mosquito found abundantly in urban environments, its biology, epidemiological potential and genetic characteristics are poorly understood. Climate change and urbanization processes that result in environmental modifications benefit certain anthropophilic mosquito species such as Ae. fluviatilis, greatly increasing their abundance in urban areas. To gain a better understanding of whether urbanization processes modulate the genetic structure of this species in the city of São Paulo, we used eight microsatellite loci to genetically characterize Ae. fluviatilis populations collected in nine urban parks in the city of São Paulo. Our results show that there is high gene flow among the populations of this species, heterozygosity deficiency and low genetic structure and that the species may have undergone a recent population expansion. There are two main hypotheses to explain these findings: (i) Ae. fluviatilis populations have undergone a population expansion as a result of urbanization; and (ii) as urbanization of the city of São Paulo occurred recently and was quite intense, the structuring of these populations cannot be observed yet, apart from in the populations of Ibirapuera and Piqueri parks, where the first signs of structuring have appeared. We believe that the expansion found in Ae. fluviatilis populations is probably correlated with the unplanned urbanization of the city of São Paulo, which transformed green areas into urbanized areas, as well as the increasing population density in the city.
Highlights
Urbanization is often a chaotic process that causes environmental stress, leading to the domiciliation of insects that have adapted to man-made changes [1,2,3]
The tests to estimate the probability of null alleles showed that this was high for the Albtri3 locus in five populations (Burle Marx, Previdência, Alfredo Volpi, Chico Mendes and Carmo), for the OchcB5 locus in four populations (Ibirapuera, Piqueri, Santo Dias and Alfredo Volpi), for the OchcB9 locus in two (Burle Marx and Chico Mendes) and for the Albtri33 locus in one (Ibirapuera)
While the heterozygosity tests conducted in Bottleneck under the SMM (Stepwise Mutation Model) showed more loci with heterozygosity deficiency in eight of the nine populations, Pvalues were only significant (
Summary
Urbanization is often a chaotic process that causes environmental stress, leading to the domiciliation of insects that have adapted to man-made changes [1,2,3]. Culicids are an example of such insects and can be found abundantly in metropolitan areas, where the environment can favor a few species that have adapted to it. These species can be a source of nuisance and in some cases potential disease vectors (e.g., Aedes aegypti, Aedes albopictus, Culex quinquefasciatus, Culex nigripalpus, Aedes scapularis and Aedes fluviatilis) [1,2,4,5,6,7,8,9].
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