Comparative parasite hybrodisation ...

Comparative parasite hybrodisation genomics controlling for host divergence (2018-2020)

Investigator: Joëlle Goüy de Bellocq, Ph.D.
Number of Project: 18-19629S
Agency: Czech Science Foundation
Duration: 01. 01. 2018 - 31. 12. 2020

Parasite hybrid zones are understudied despite being natural laboratories for examining the mechanisms underlying host-parasite adaptation and specificity. A host natural system with pairwise contacts between taxa of different divergence times allows patterns of parasite genome introgression to be related to host divergence time. We propose to investigate the population genomic introgression patterns of the betaherpesviruses and the nematode Syphacia, parasites of the multimammate mouse, Mastomys natalensis, in Tanzania where 3 intraspecific taxa of the host meet and hybridize. We hypothesise that for both host and parasite barriers to introgression will increase with host pair divergence time, contacts between more closely related host taxa having wider clines in allele frequencies than contacts between more divergent taxa. This pattern should be even more pronounced for their parasites given their shorter generation time. Comparison of host/parasite genome-wide introgression patterns may, further, allow us to identify genes key to host-parasite interaction (e.g. “emergence” genes).