By pairing dense sequencing with ecological data, we show how seasonality, mosquito life history, and host interactions structure viral evolution and spread, offering a framework to study other neglected arboviruses!! 🦟🦠🧬
A huge thank you to GLab, my mentors at YSPH, and our amazing collaborators!
We estimate JCV spreads only ~30–60 km²/year, a relatively slow rate for a mosquito-borne virus. This may reflect how univoltine Aedes mosquitoes maintain the virus in restricted areas across years, while multivoltine mosquitoes drive short-term bursts of spread.
Although we detected JCV in 26 mosquito species, discrete trait analyses show it spends ~80–90% of its evolutionary time in univoltine Aedes mosquitoes. These early-season, single-brood mosquitoes drive long-term persistence, while multivoltine species likely sustain transmission later in summer.
Our phylodynamic analyses suggest JCV has been circulating in the Northeast for centuries: introduced by at least the early 1700s, with major lineages entering Connecticut between the mid-1800s and mid-1900s. This suggests that JCV has persisted through major ecological shifts in the Northeast!
We estimate that JCV evolves at ~3 × 10⁻⁵ substitutions/site/year, making it one of the slowest-evolving known RNA viruses! After breaking this estimate into seasonal time periods, we think this is because it spends ~10 months per year in evolutionary stasis while overwintering in mosquito eggs.
We generated 658 whole-genome JCV sequences from the Northeast US, including 84% of all JCV-positive mosquitoes collected in Connecticut from 1997–2022, expanding available genomic data nearly 17-fold.
JCV is widespread across North America, but we’ve known surprisingly little about how it spreads, evolves, or persists. This gap has made it hard to assess risk or understand its epidemiology. We propose that different types of mosquitoes play unique roles in maintaining and spreading the virus!
This is my first first-author paper, advised by @nathangrubaugh.bsky.social, Phil Armstrong, @viralverity.bsky.social, @chantalvogels.bsky.social and Alex Ciota! Such a collaborative effort with mosquito surveillance orgs and phylodynamic researchers (@sdellicour.bsky.social, @lemeylab.bsky.social)
🦟📄 New preprint! Our first large-scale phylodynamic study of Jamestown Canyon virus (JCV) reveals how mosquito ecology shapes the evolution, persistence, and spread of this understudied arbovirus in North America.
Read it here! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
📢New preprint on the impact of dengue virus genetic diversity on inhibition by Wolbachia 🦟🦠🧬
Project led by Afeez Sodeinde, @emiliefinch.bsky.social, and @keli5734.bsky.social! ✨
Key findings in thread below 👇
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
