Exploring the phylogeographic patterns and genetic diversity of urban cockroaches (Dictyoptera: Blattodea) from Bogota, Colombia

Urban areas are recently considered fast changing ecosystems that could be shaping the genetic structure of species living within them, through evolutionary process like isolation and migration. Cockroaches are one of the organisms coexisting with humans, and they are considered a worldwide pest due to their implications in health issues and economic losses. We sampled a total of 45 individuals from homes and restaurants across 3 districts within one of the highest elevational (2600 m) cities in the Neotropical region, Bogotá D.C, Colombia. We were able to molecularly identify three species of urban cockroaches in our samples, Blattella germanica (Linnaeus), Periplaneta americana (Linnaeus) and Periplaneta brunnea (Burmeister), using mitochondrial and nuclear DNA fragments (i.e. COI, 16s and the reported COI-Like pseudogenes).  In addition, we explored phylogeographic position of our samples in relation to other members of these three species worldwide, using a phylogenetic reconstruction of the mitochondrial fragments. Finally, for the most common species, B. germanica, we explored the genetic diversity and structure of populations across different evaluated districts within the city. Our phylogenetic reconstructions did not show a significant geographical pattern of relatedness for any of the three species, consistent with large scale human-mediated dispersion. Our populations statistics and haplotype networks showed that some districts are more genetically diverse than others. Our AMOVA suggested that most of genetic variation is explained by differences within the districts. Our mtDNA FST values show some genetic differentiation, which might be suggesting connectivity and isolation patterns across the evaluated districts within the city.