Population Expansion And High Gene Flow In Aedes Fluviatilis (Diptera: Culicidae) In Urban Areas

Abstract:
Aedes fluviatilis is an anthropophilic mosquito abundantly found in urban environments, however, its biology, epidemiological role and genetic characteristics are poorly known. Urbanization processes that resulted in environmental modifications together with climate change benefit certain anthropophilic mosquitoes’ species such as Ae. fluviatilis, increasing its abundance in urban areas. Aiming for better understand whether urbanization processes may modulate the genetic structure of this species in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, there were utilized eight microsatellite loci to genetically characterize Ae. fluviatilis populations collected in nine urban parks located in the city of São Paulo. The results indicated that this species has high gene flow among their populations, low genetic structure, high genetic variation within populations, as a result of a population demographic expansion. Also, our findings suggest that Ae. fluviatilis populations are segregated in two main groups, the first composed by population collected in more conserved areas and the second composed by two populations collected in highly urbanized areas. This result led us to hypothesize that the population dynamics found in this study is probably correlated with the urbanization of the city of São Paulo, which consists mainly in the transformation of rural areas into urbanized areas, to accommodate the increasingly concentration of people living within the city.