The pig tapeworm
Taenia solium can cause the
tropical disease cysticercosis. Humans are the only definitive hosts
of the worm and pigs are the principal intermediate hosts.
The
tapeworm can be divided into two mtDNA lineages, Asian and
Afro-American, with disjunct geographical distributions. Recently it
was found that both lineages exist in Madagascar. The
first humans settled in Madagascar about 2000 years ago. Linguistic
and archeological evidence suggests that people on Madagascar have
ancestry from Island South-east Asia and East Africa. Recently,
by studying mtDNA, a genetic
contribution from India has been suggested.
By
studying the genetics of the tapeworm insights for the distributional
history of hosts and parasites can be gained.
In
this paper, they collected larvae from pigs across five provinces on
Madagascar. Their results
indicate the importance of Indian influence on the diversity of
people and culture in Madagascar, and
that the tapeworms were introduced in Madagascar (within the past
hundreds of years) multiple times with people and swines from East
Africa. They also find evidence for hybridization between tapeworms
with different genotypes.
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