Urban enrichment of molestus ancestry and opposing temperature clines in a metropolitan Culex pipiens hybrid zone
Hybridization between ecologically distinct lineages can fuel rapid adaptation when introgressed alleles are locally favored. The North American Culex pipiens assemblage, a principal West Nile virus vector east of the Mississippi, comprises three lineages---temperate Cx. pipiens f. pipiens , urban-specialist Cx. pipiens f. molestus , and subtropical Cx. quinquefasciatus ---that meet in a mid-Atlantic hybrid zone where temperature and urbanization gradients intersect. Using whole-genome Pool-seq of 24 field populations and three lineage-reference pools across the Baltimore--Washington corridor, we find a weakly differentiated, Cx. pipiens f. pipiens -like background, richer in molestus - and quinquefasciatus -like ancestry toward the warmer end of the corridor. Urbanization impacts allele frequencies across the genome: molestus-like ancestry rises with impervious surface, independently of temperature and position, while Cx. quinquefasciatus -like ancestry does not. An 11.6 Mb chromosome 3 inversion is molestus-like in every population, most of all in urban ones, and tracks genome-wide molestus-like ancestry. Temperature acts locus by locus. On chromosome 1, a cluster of six CYP6 paralogs, a family implicated in insecticide resistance and thermal-stress response, shows rising Cx. quinquefasciatus -like ancestry and read depth with temperature. A chromosome 2 interval centered on a Yan ortholog, a repressor of cell differentiation, shows non- quinquefasciatus ancestry increasing with temperature, consistent with selection against Cx. quinquefasciatus -like introgression. Urban populations therefore carry more ancestry from the human-commensal lineage, while temperature moves ancestry both ways at individual loci. Both molestus and Cx. quinquefasciatus donors carry human-contact traits, so these patterns bear on how warming and urbanization will reshape arboviral risk.
Authors
- Katherine L. Bell (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1563-2468)
- Megan Lindsay Fritz (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0472-4877)
- Arielle Arsenault‐Benoit (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2976-2100)
- Benjamin Gregory (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-6291-2163)
Institutions
- Texas State University (US)
- University of Maryland Global Campus (US)
- University of Maryland, College Park (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
- Published
- 2026-11-03
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.10.30.763117
- Primary Topic
- Genetic diversity and population structure
- Type
- preprint