From ground pools to treeholes: convergent evolution of habitat and phenotype in Aedes mosquitoes

BMC Evolutionary Biology

Research Article

Todd P. Livdahl¹  Theodore G. Andreadis²  John Soghigian² 

[1] Biology Department, Clark University, 950 Main Street, 01610, Worcester, MA, USA;Center for Vector Biology & Zoonotic Diseases, The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, 123 Huntington St., 06511, New Haven, CT, USA;

关键词: Convergence;    Evolution;    Habitat specialization;    Aedes;    Mosquitoes;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12862-017-1092-y

 received in 2017-08-29, accepted in 2017-11-24,  发布年份 2017

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundInvasive mosquito species are responsible for millions of vector-borne disease cases annually. The global invasive success of Aedes mosquitoes such as Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus has relied on the human transport of immature stages in container habitats. However, despite the importance of these mosquitoes and this ecological specialization to their widespread dispersal, evolution of habitat specialization in this group has remained largely unstudied. We use comparative methods to evaluate the evolution of habitat specialization and its potential influence on larval morphology, and evaluate whether container dwelling and invasiveness are monophyletic in Aedes.ResultsWe show that habitat specialization has evolved repeatedly from ancestral ground pool usage to specialization in container habitats. Furthermore, we find that larval morphological scores are significantly associated with larval habitat when accounting for evolutionary relationships. We find that Ornstein-Uhleinbeck models with unique optima for each larval habitat type are preferred over several other models based predominantly on neutral processes, and that OU models can reliably simulate real morphological data.ConclusionsOur results demonstrate that multiple lineages of Aedes have convergently evolved a key trait associated with invasive success: the use of container habitats for immature stages. Moreover, our results demonstrate convergence in morphological characteristics as well, and suggest a role of adaptation to habitat specialization in driving phenotypic diversity in this mosquito lineage. Finally, our results highlight that the genus Aedes is not monophyletic.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© The Author(s). 2017