As one of the primary carriers of malaria, the Anopheles gambiae mosquito is one of the most dangerous animals in the world. Now efforts to wipe out malaria must succeed quickly, because it's rapidly evolving into two separate species.

Malaria infects two hundred million people a year, and killed nearly 900,000 people in 2009. Many efforts to stop the spread of the disease involved targetting the different strains of the Anopheles gambiae mosquito. Researchers at Imperial College London have found that two strains which are physically identical but have genetic variations at 400,000 points in their genome. The variations are not likely to converge. In fact, Dr Mara Lawniczak of Imperial College London says they're diverging quickly:


There is no clear answer to the question of what is driving this divergence. Whatever it is, it could lead to differences in breeding, feeding, or bodily development between these two strains. This means that any strategy which targets breeding sites, or advises people to avoid certain places where mosquitos feed, may simply replace one malaria carrier with another. More studies are planned to research the genetic differences more thoroughly.


Via Science and Roll Back Malaria.