Abstract. Agricultural use of insecticides is involved in the selection of resistance to these compounds in field populations of mosquitoes in Burkina Faso. Anopheles gambiae s.l. was resistant to permethrin and DDT in cottongrowing and urban areas, but susceptible in areas with limited insecticide selection pressure (rice fields and control areas). Nevertheless, resistance to these insecticides was observed in a village on the outskirts of the rice fields at the end of the rainy season, suggesting that the latter population of mosquitoes had migrated from the surrounding cotton villages into the rice fields. A seasonal variation of resistance observed in the cotton-growing area is related to the distribution of the molecular M and S forms of An. gambiae, since resistance to pyrethroids has so far only been reported in the S form. Pyrethroid resistance in west African An. gambiae was conferred by target site insensitivity through a knockdown resistance (kdr)-like mutation, which was present at high frequencies in mosquitoes in the cotton-growing and urban areas.
Anopheles gambiae s.s. is a complex of sibling taxa characterized by various paracentric inversions. In west and central Africa, where several taxa are sympatric, a kdr mutation responsible for pyrethroid resistance has been described in only one (the S taxon), suggesting an absence of gene flow between them. Following a thorough sampling, we have found a kdr mutation in another taxon (M). To establish whether this mutation is the same event or not, the large intron upstream of the kdr mutation was sequenced to find polymorphic sites in susceptible/resistant and M/S mosquitoes. The low genetic diversity found in this DNA region indicates that a local genetic sweep has recently occurred. However, some polymorphic sites were found, and it is therefore concluded that the kdr mutation in the M taxon is not an independent mutation event, and is best explained by an introgression from the S taxon. These results are discussed within the context of possible gene flow between members of An. gambiae s.s. taxa, and with the possible spread of the kdr mutation in other closely related malaria vectors of the An. gambiae complex.
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