Abstract: Insect pollination sustains the biodiversity of 90% of wild plants, and 75% of crop species for food and nutritional security. Chemical pesticides used to manage arthropod pests constitute a key driver to the unprecedented declines of insect pollinators worldwide. Hence, biopesticides based on entomopathogenic fungi (EPF) are being promoted as safer alternatives. The effects of EPF on insect pollinators have not been investigated in detail for the application in pollinator-resource...
Abstract: Controphic species are organisms that share the same trophic levels within an ecosystem.Ecological theory and empirical research show that controphic species affect mosquito larval populations through predation or competition. The goal of this study was to identify controphic species that may serve as potential biological control agents for malaria mosquito larvae. A baseline survey of the abundance and diversity of malaria mosquito larvae (target species) and assemblages of their ...
Abstract: African Animal Trypanosomiasis (AAT) is caused by parasites of the species Trypanosoma vivax, Trypanosoma congolense, and Trypanosoma rhodesiense. Of 48 sub-Saharan African nations, 36 have endemic cases of AAT. The disease is prevalent in savannah and woodland areas. It poses a major threat to livestock production and health in agro-pastoralist communities, many of which are located along the boundaries of wildlife reserves. Most epidemiological studies on AAT around Shimba Hills ...
Abstract: Stingless honeybee keeping is an income generating enterprise with an indirect potential of achieving the goal of forest and biodiversity conservation in Kenya. However, little information is available on species diversity and spatial distribution of stingless bees in Kenya. This study describes variations of stingless bee samples collected from Arabuko Sokoke, Mwingi and Kakamega forests, ranging from low, middle to high altitude, respectively using morphometrics and DNA barcoding...
Abstract: Maize lethal necrosis (MLN) - a big threat to maize production and food security in Kenya, is caused by co-infection of maize with Maize chlorotic mottle virus (MCMV) and Sugarcane mosaic virus (SCMV). In severely affected maize fields, MLN destroys the crop completely with a devastating impact on food security of smallholder households. Since the disease was only recently documented in Kenya, there is limited information on its pathogenesis due to SCMV and MCMV interaction, the ef...
Abstract: Industrial rearing of insects, especially the black soldier fly, is gaining momentum in recent years because of the increase in food and feed insecurity, high prices of animal feeds and animal proteins, and population growth. This in turn has led to increased global demand for alternative sources of protein apart from traditional livestock products. This study focused on evaluating the gut microbial community dynamics of both the layer and broiler chickens that have been fed on BSF...
Abstract: In Africa, honeybees provide critical pollination services, nutrition and income for smallholder farmers. However, because of pests and pathogens honeybees are under threat of population decline. Moreover, lack of adequate research on the existing queen rearing technologies has led to decline in honeybee queen quality. The honeybee queen is the repository of a colony’s heritable genetic traits, its superiority determines the productivity and resilience of the colony. Effects of f...
Abstract: Arthropod borne viruses (arboviruses) are transmitted by blood sucking arthropods. Disease outbreaks caused by arboviruses are sporadic and unpredictable. Arboviral disease outbreaks in Kenya have confirmed the presence of a number of arboviral diseases within the human and animal populace. Currently, there are no approved or specific therapies for arboviral infections; treatment is limited to palliative care. Early detection and vector control are important strategies in control o...
Abstract: The new generation of metagenomics has gained tremendous popularity in recent years. This has been majorly due to rapid advances in DNA sequencing technology, which has produced large amounts of sequence data in relatively shorter times, compared to conventional DNA sequencing methods. There is a need to taxonomically characterise these data by assigning individual sequence reads to their constituent taxa. However, there is lack of up-to-date and customized software tools to accomp...
Abstract: Ticks are haematophagous ectoparasites capable of transmitting diseases to vertebrates and, therefore, constitute a threat to human, livestock and wildlife health. Though synthetic chemical aearicides have made a tremendous impact over the years in the control and management of the vector on livestock, ticks have developed resistance to most of them. In addition, the chemicals are toxic to non-target organisms. In some parts of Kenya, powdered parts of some plants, including those ...
ABSTRACT Insecticide resistance affects the re-emergence of vector borne diseases and their control. Resistance to insecticides poses a risk to compromise the role of chemical vector control as a component of the integrated vector management. The kdr (knock down resistance) allele is characterised by a single base pair substitution causing a change from leu to phe (West Africa) or leu to see (East African) in codon 1014 of the voltage sensitive sodium channel protein sequence. In Ken...
Abstract: Dose-response studies in arthropod research usually involve observing and collecting successive information at different times on the same group of organisms (insects) exposed to different concentrations of stimulus such as botanical extracts. When successive observations are made on the same group of organisms at several concentrations over time the data becomes correlated. Correlated insect mortality data cannot be analyzed using Probit Analysis technique which is the usual way o...
Abstract: Researchers are often times confronted with compositional data in insect choice studies. The choice of a statistical method to model this type of data is always not obvious. In this study, three approaches for analysis of compositional data from choice tests made by the predatory parasitoid Cotesia sesamaie Cameron in a four-arm olfactometer was explored using centered, additive and isometric log ratio transformations. Oviposition induced plant volatiles (OIPVs), herbivore induced ...
Abstract: Generation of the three dimensional structures of macromolecules using in silico structural modeling technologies such as homology and de novo modeling has improved dramatically and increased the speed in which tertiary structures of organisms of interest can be generated. This is especially the case if a homologous crystal structure is already available. High resolution structures can be rapidly created using only their sequence information as input and thus increasing the speed o...
Abstract: Onset of uncomplicated malaria is characterized by fever, headache, joint pains, myalgia and lack of appetite. These non-specific signs and symptoms also present in patients with arthropod borne viral (arboviral) infections complicate differential diagnoses. The lack of diagnostics that can detect arboviral infections in Kenyan public hospitals coupled with malaria diagnostic tools incapable of detecting low Plasmodiumparasitemia,has led to diagnosis based on clinical symptoms only...