TY - JOUR T1 - Fine-scale landscape genomics helps explain the slow spread of <em>Wolbachia</em> through the <em>Aedes aegypti</em> population in Cairns, Australia JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/103598 SP - 103598 AU - Thomas. L. Schmidt AU - Igor. Filipović AU - Ary A. Hoffmann AU - Gordana Rašić Y1 - 2017/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/06/19/103598.abstract N2 - The endosymbiotic bacterium Wolbachia is a promising tool for controlling arboviral diseases transmitted by the mosquito Aedes aegypti, and can spread unassisted through wild mosquito populations following local introductions. Recent Wolbachia introductions into Ae. aegypti populations in Cairns, Australia have produced a slower than anticipated spread that could be due to: i) barriers to Ae. aegypti dispersal; ii) dispersal being leptokurtically biased towards long distances in adults; and iii) non-perfect transmission of Wolbachia from mother to offspring. We investigated these three potential causes using double-digest RAD-sequencing and Wolbachia screening in 161 Ae. aegypti collected from Cairns in 2015. We detected a significant barrier effect of Cairns highways on Ae. aegypti dispersal using distance-based redundancy analysis (dbRDA) and patch-based simulation analysis. We detected putative full-siblings in ovitraps 1312 m apart, indicating the potential for long-distance movement in Ae. aegypti females that are generally considered weak dispersers. We also detected a pair of full-siblings, only one of which was Wolbachia-infected, indicating transmission failure of Wolbachia in the field. While the long-distance movement and Wolbachia loss currently represent single observations, these findings together with the identified dispersal barriers help explain the slow spread of Wolbachia through the Ae. aegypti population in Cairns. Our landscape genomics approach can be extended to other host/symbiont systems that are increasingly being considered for the biocontrol of disease vectors and pests. ER -