title: Wetlands explain most in the genetic divergence pattern of Oncomelania hupensis.
abstract: Understanding the divergence patterns of hosts could shed lights on the prediction of their parasite transmission. No effort has been devoted to understand the drivers of genetic divergence pattern of Oncomelania hupensis, the only intermediate host of Schistosoma japonicum. Based on a compilation of two O. hupensis gene datasets covering a wide geographic range in China and an array of geographical distance and environmental dissimilarity metrics built from earth observation data and ecological niche modeling, we conducted causal modeling analysis via simple, partial Mantel test and local polynomial fitting to understand the interactions among isolation-by-distance, isolation-by-environment, and genetic divergence. We found that geography contributes more to genetic divergence than environmental isolation, and among all variables involved, wetland showed the strongest correlation with the genetic pairwise distances. These results suggested that in China, O. hupensis dispersal is strongly linked to the distribution of wetlands, and the current divergence pattern of both O. hupensis and schistosomiasis might be altered due to the changed wetland pattern with the accomplishment of the Three Gorges Dam and the South-to-North water transfer project.
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3114, USA.
authors.forename: Lu
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Liang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol and College of Ecology and Evolution, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China.
authors.forename: Yang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA.
authors.forename: Jishan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Liao
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3114, USA; Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Earth System Modeling, Center for Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China. Electronic address: penggong@berkeley.edu.
authors.forename: Peng
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Gong
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002681:China; D021901:DNA, Intergenic; D017753:Ecosystem; D003576:Electron Transport Complex IV / Q000235:genetics; D049851:Gastropoda / Q000235:genetics*; D014644:Genetic Variation; D005843:Geography; D053833:Wetlands
chemical_list: D021901:DNA, Intergenic; D003576:Electron Transport Complex IV
keywords: Genetic divergence; Isolation by distance; Landscape genetics; Oncomelania hupensis; Schistosomiasis japonicum; Spatial autocorrelation