Figure 2.

Sites in Mauritania have less genotypically mixed Plasmodium falciparum infections than elsewhere in West Africa. (a) Locations of eight sites sampled in Mauritania, and eight in other West African countries to the south (in Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea Bissau and Republic of Guinea). The eight sites sampled in Mauritania from which infections were genotyped for a panel of ten microsatellite loci are as described in Fig. 1 and Table 1, whereas details for the eight other West African sites analysed with the same set of microsatellite loci are previously published (Mobegi et al. 2012). (b) Two different indices are plotted, each showing significantly lower genotypic complexity of infections at sites in Mauritania than elsewhere (Mann–Whitney test, P < 0.001 for each index). The only non‐Mauritanian site with unusually low levels of mixed genotype infections, within the range of values seen in Mauritania, is a major urban area on the Atlantic coast of The Gambia where malaria infection endemicity is known to be lower than elsewhere (Ceesay et al. 2010).