Ancient origin of an urban underground mosquito
- Yuki Haba
- Petra Korlević
- Erica McAlister
- Mara K. N. Lawniczak
- Molly Schumer
- Noah H. Rose
- Carolyn S. McBride
- Matthew L. Aardema
- Maria O. Afonso
- Natasha M. Agramonte
- John Albright
- Ana Margarida Alho
- Antonio P. G. Almeida
- Haoues 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
- Diego Ayala
- Rasha S. Azrag
- Lilit Babayan
- Allon Bear
- Norbert Becker
- Anna G. Bega
- Sophia Bejarano
- Ira Ben-Avi
- Joshua B. Benoit
- Saïd C. Boubidi
- William E. Bradshaw
- Daniel Bravo-Barriga
- Rubén Bueno-Marí
- Nataša Bušić
- Viktoria Čabanová
- Brittany Cabeje
- Beniamino Caputo
- Maria V. Cardo
- Simon Carpenter
- Elena Carreton
- Mouhamadou S. Chouaïbou
- Michelle Christian
- Maureen Coetzee
- William R. Conner
- Anton Cornel
- C. Lorna Culverwell
2025-10-23
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.