Two smiling people in yellow and red rain jackets on basalt shore with waves, palm trees (photo)

Fieldwork Update from São Tomé and Príncipe

  • by Christine Coleman

SRA Brett Morgan and Postdoc Shreena Pradhan recently returned from fieldwork in São Tomé and Príncipe, where they contributed to two complementary projects on Anopheles coluzzii. One project investigated how this malaria vector tolerates saline environments, with larvae collected from various sites spanning fresh to brackish waters and tested in the lab for salt stress responses, alongside RNA sequencing to identify genes involved in salinity tolerance. 

The second project focused on building a high-resolution reference genome for Gulf of Guinea populations, using adult mosquitoes collected via human landing catches on São Tomé and Príncipe and preserved for long-read PacBio sequencing. Together, these efforts help reveal how mosquito populations adapt to changing environments and move across island systems—information that is critical for improving malaria control strategies.

See more photos from the trip here