Ancient origin of an urban underground mosquito
Yuki Haba, Petra Korlević, Erica McAlister, Mara Lawniczak, Molly Schumer, Noah H. Rose, Carolyn S. McBride, Matthew L. Aardema, María José Afonso, Natasha M. Agramonte, John Albright, Ana Margarida Alho, António Paulo Gouveia de Almeida, Haoués Alout, Bulent Alten, Mine Altinli, Raouf Amara Korba, Stefanos S. Andreadis, Vincent Anghel, Soukaina Arich, Arielle Arsenault‐Benoit, Célestine Atyame, Fabien Aubry, Frank W. Avila, Diégo Ayala, Rasha S. Azrag, Lilit Babayan, Allon Bear, Norbert Becker, Anna G. Bega, Sophia Bejarano, Ira Ben-Avi, Joshua B. Benoit, Saïd Chaouki Boubidi, William E. Bradshaw, Daniel Bravo‐Barriga, Rubén Bueno‐Marí, Nataša Bušić, Viktória Čabanová, Brittany Cabeje, Beniamino Caputo, Maria V. Cardo, Simon Carpenter, Elena Carretón, Mouhamadou Chouaïbou, Michelle Christian, Maureen Coetzee, William R. Conner, Anton Cornel, C. Lorna Culverwell, Aleksandra Ignjatović‐Ćupina, Katrien De Wolf, Isra Deblauwe, Brittany Deegan, Sarah Delacour‐Estrella, Alessandra della Torre, Debora Diaz, Serena E. Dool, Vitor L. dos Anjos, Sisay Dugassa, Babak Ebrahimi, Samar Y. M. Eisa, Nohal Élissa, Sahar Ahmed Baker Fallatah, Ary Faraji, M. V. Fedorova, Emily Ferrill, Dina M. Fonseca, Kimberly A. Foss, Cipriano Foxi, Caio M B França, Stephen Fricker, Megan L. Fritz, Eva Frontera, Hans‐Peter Fuehrer, Kyoko Futami, Enas H. Ghallab, Romain Girod, Gordeev Mi, David M. Greer, Martin Gschwind, Milehna M. Guarido, Teoh Guat Ney, Filiz Günay, Eran Haklay, Alwia A. E. Hamad, Jun Hang, Christopher M. Hardy, Jacob W. Hartle, Jenny C. Hesson, Yukiko Higa, Christina M. Holzapfel, Ann‐Christin Honnen, Angela Monica Ionică, Laura Jones, Përparim Kadriaj, Hany A. Kamal, Colince Kamdem, Dmitry A. Karagodin, Shinji Kasai
Abstract
Understanding how life is adapting to urban environments represents an important challenge in evolutionary biology. In this work, we investigate a widely cited example of urban adaptation, Culex pipiens form molestus , also known as the London Underground mosquito. Population genomic analysis of ~350 contemporary and historical samples counters the popular hypothesis that molestus originated belowground in London <200 years ago. Instead, we show that molestus first adapted to human environments aboveground in the Mediterranean or Middle East over the course of more than 1000 years, possibly in association with ancient agricultural civilizations of the Middle East. Our results highlight the role of early human society in priming taxa for contemporary urban evolution. They also provide insight into whether and how molestus contributes to West Nile virus transmission in modern cities.