Data from: A comprehensive assessment of inbreeding and laboratory adaptation in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes

Modified Aedes aegypti mosquitoes reared in laboratories are being
released around the world to control wild mosquito populations and the
diseases they transmit. Several efforts have failed due to poor
competitiveness of the released mosquitoes. We hypothesized that colonized
mosquito populations could suffer from inbreeding depression and adapt to
laboratory conditions, reducing their performance in the field. We
established replicate populations of Ae. aegypti mosquitoes collected from
Queensland, Australia, and maintained them in the laboratory for twelve
generations at different census sizes. Mosquito colonies maintained at
small census sizes (≤100 individuals) suffered from inbreeding depression
due to low effective population sizes which were only 25% of the census
size as estimated by SNP markers. Populations that underwent full-sib
mating for 9 consecutive generations had greatly reduced performance
across all traits measured. We compared the established laboratory
populations with their ancestral population resurrected from quiescent
eggs for evidence of laboratory adaptation. The overall performance of
laboratory populations maintained at a large census size (400 individuals)
increased, potentially reflecting adaptation to artificial rearing
conditions. However most individual traits were unaffected, and patterns
of adaptation were not consistent across populations. Differences between
replicate populations may indicate that founder effects and drift affect
experimental outcomes. Though we find limited evidence of laboratory
adaptation, mosquitoes maintained at low population sizes can clearly
suffer fitness costs, compromising the success of “rear and release”
strategies for arbovirus control.