Mosquitoes and an evolved taste for humans: a podcast from the authors

In a recent study published in BMC Biology, Dr. Frank Jiggins and his team at the university of Cambridge uncovered the evolutionary history of mosquito migrations and domestication events, findings they discuss in the most recent episode of our BioMed Central Podcast.

The group found that human-feeding Ae. aegypti mosquitos from an urban population in Senegal, West Africa, were more closely related to populations in Mexico and Sri Lanka than they were to a nearby forest population that fed on animals.

Dr. Jiggins and his team believe that an ancestral population of Ae. aegypti evolved into a human specialist, thus, giving rise to a subspecies known as aegypti aegypti. It is thought that this population migrated out of Africa, therefore explaining why there are such similarities between distant Asian and American populations.

In the podcast, Dr. Jiggins talks to us about his research, the implication that these findings have for disease transmission and a potential explanation as to how this migration occurred.

 

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Francesca Martin

Communications Assistant at BioMed Central
Francesca graduated from Uppsala University with an MSc in Immunology & Infection Biology. She joined BioMed Central in June 2016.
Francesca Martin

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