Mosquitoes Hint at Homo Erectus Migration

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE—According to a statement released by the Nature Publishing Group, Anopheles leucosphyrus mosquitoes may have evolved to feed on humans in Southeast Asia. Upasana Shyamsunder Singh of Vanderbilt University, Catherine Walton of the University of Manchester, and their colleagues sequenced DNA from 38 modern-day mosquitoes from 11 species in the leucosphyrus group. Then the researchers employed computer models and estimates of DNA mutation rates to reconstruct the evolution of these mosquitoes. The study suggests that the bugs switched from feeding on non-human primates to early humans in the region of Sundaland, an area including the Malay Peninsula, Borneo, Sumatra, and Java, between 2.9 and 1.6 million years ago. This timeline supports the limited fossil evidence indicating that Homo erectus lived in Southeast Asia some 1.8 million years ago, the researchers concluded. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Scientific Reports. To read about the arrival of Homo sapiens to the region, go to "Settling Southeast Asia."