Interactions between natural populations of human and rodent schistosomes in the Lake Victoria region of Kenya: a molecular epidemiological approach.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Schistosoma mansoni exists in a complex environmental milieu that may select for significant evolutionary changes in this species. In Kenya, the sympatric distribution of S. mansoni with S. rodhaini potentially influences the epidemiology, ecology, and evolutionary biology of both species, because they infect the same species of snail and mammalian hosts and are capable of hybridization.

Methodology/principal findings

Over a 2-year period, using a molecular epidemiological approach, we examined spatial and temporal distributions, and the overlap of these schistosomes within snails, in natural settings in Kenya. Both species had spatially and temporally patchy distributions, although S. mansoni was eight times more common than S. rodhaini. Both species were overdis

SUBMITTER: Steinauer ML 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2291567 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature