Phylogeography of Aedes Aegypti in Argentina: Long-Distance Colonization and Rapid Restoration of Fragmented Relicts After a Continental Control Campaign

Abstract

Aedes (Stegomyia) aegypti, the main vector of Dengue and Yellow Fever viruses, is present in all the northern and central provinces of Argentina. During 2009, a Dengue outbreak spread broadly throughout the country, causing 27,752 infections in 13 provinces. In Argentina, little is known about the demographic history of this vector, which suffered a drastic decrease in abundance and distribution during a major control campaign performed in the Americas between 1950 and 1960. With the aim of uncovering the past and present events that determined the present distribution of the genetic variability in Ae. aegypti populations, we analyzed the distribution and abundance of mitochondrial haplotypes obtained by sequencing a 450-bp fragment of the ND5 gene. We detected 14 haplotypes among the sequences of 197 individuals from 22 populations that cover most of the distribution of the species in Argentina; one population from Bolivia and one from Paraguay were also included. A high heterogeneity in the geographical distribution of the genetic polymorphism was observed, with a pattern of isolation by distance in the north-west of Argentina. Haplotypes nested in three haplogroups, representing different colonization events and evolutionary histories in distant geographical areas. North-western and northeastern populations correspond to independent introduced stocks for which a past fragmentation and rapid restoration from highly polymorphic relicts were inferred. By contrast, a unique genetic variant was detected in the east, probably as the result of a recent re-colonization event after the major control campaign; in this area, the mosquito would have been practically eradicated as a consequence of the continental control campaign.