Origen filogeográfico de Aedes albopictus (SKUSE) en Ecuador inferido por ADN mitocondrial

Abstract

The mosquito species Aedes albopictus was first reported in Ecuador during 2017. This insect is an important risk to public health due to its capacity to keep viable eggs in the diapause stage until favorable environmental conditions for development present, as well as its low exclusivity in hosts for blood meals, which makes this species a key vector in the transmission of enzootic diseases, some of which are under constant screening by the public ministry of health of Ecuador. In this study, the phylogeographic relationship of Ecuador’s A. albopictus was analized using the COI gene. DNA was extracted from 3 samples following an in-house procedure. Phylogenetic trees using Neighbor-Joining, Maximum Likelihood and Maximum parsimony algorithms and an haplotype network was generated. Three different haplotypes were found in Ecuador. H1 was found to have Asian origins, H2 was found to be a unique haplotype, and H3 was found to be introduced from Colombia to Ecuador