Worldwide Population Structure of Human Head Lice: Insights from Whole Genome SNPs

NIYOMI HOUSE; AIDA T. MIRÓ-HERRANS; NATACHA V. WIRDEMARK; LAJOS ROZSA; MUHAMMAD ASHFAQ; KOSTA Y. MUMCUOGLU; JAN STEFKA; ARIEL CEFERINO TOLOZA; HEINZ MEHLHORN; ALEJANDRA PEROTTI; HENK BRAIG; DIDIER RAOULT; OLEG MEDIANNIKOV,; JULIE M. ALLEN; BRET BOYD; DAVID L. REED

Virtual

Congreso; Virtual Evolution 2021; 2021

The society for the study of Evolution

Human head lice (Pediculus humanus capitis) are blood sucking obligate parasites.? They have been evolving in tandem with theirhosts for thousands of years1.? Human-louse coevolution dynamic makes theman ideal candidate to infer historical host movement and worldwide population structure.Objective 1: Examine the genetic diversity and distribution of genetic variants among louse populations.? Objective 2: Population genetic structure of lice? Objective 3: Population differentiation among louse populations.? We sequenced the whole genomes of 377 licefrom 43 countries. Our final SNP dataset included 29819 SNPs? For objective1: We calculated the nucleotide diversity andran an AMOVA2 analysis.? For objective 2: We ran a PCA4, DAPC3 and STRUCTUREanalysis5 ? For objective 3: We calculated the pairwise FST values2. We found the highest genetic diversity in Africa.? Head lice seem to be more structured and retained more variation in their respective populations than expected.? Lousepopulationsarehighly differentiated by continent and mirror human population structure.