Population genetics and dynamics at short spatial scale in Bulinus truncatus, the intermediate host of Schistosoma haematobium, in Morocco

The population biology of the schistosome–vector snail Bulinus truncatus was studied in an irrigation system near Marrakech, Morocco using both genetic and demographic approaches. The population genetic survey was conducted in 4 sites, 2 sites being sampled on 2 separate occasions. Individuals were genotyped at 6 microsatellite loci. No variability was found at 4 loci, and the 2 other loci had less than 4 alleles. The differentiation, both spatial and temporal, among populations was extremely weak. The demographic survey was conducted using 2 capture-mark-recapture analyses in 2 separate sites, the first in 1999 and the second in 2000. The second analysis permitted the estimation of parameters based on recent methodological developments (multisite models). Although these studies provided information on several traits, we report here on dispersal only. Both analyses showed that individual dispersal is of the order of a few hundreds of metres per reproductive life, that is the scale of the whole irrigation area. Both the genetic and demographic studies indicated that this area harbours a single – or no more than a few – populations of B. truncatus. This has implications for our understanding of the coevolutionary process between snails and flukes.