Affiliations: 1) Department of Life Sciences, Silwood Park Campus, Imperial College London; 2) Uganda Virus Research Institute
Keywords: Population history
Sub-Saharan malaria-transmitting mosquito populations exhibit strong seasonal dynamics with huge temporal population size variation. Very often these populations re-establish and expand rapidly with the first rain after a prolonged period of arid conditions. It remains a great challenge to understand their survival during the dry season. One popular hypothesis is that aestivation, a form of dormancy, helps them persist in the drier months. Such hypothesis, with little direct evidence, is as controversial as the other hypotheses proposed. Utilising the indirect genetic approach we aim to establish the expected genetic signatures under different hypotheses, including aestivation, continuously-reproducing, and migration models. These models are developed by customising the classical Wright-Fisher model. Genetic signals such as linkage disequilibrium, change in allele frequency, heterozygosity, relatedness, are explored. In particular, the discrepancy between longer and shorter term effective population size estimates may be one of the consequences of aestivation. These quantitative findings provide valuable resources to support future population monitoring, parameter estimation, and experimental design.