Browsing by Author "Machang'u, Robert S"

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    Mice, rats, and people: the bio-economics of agricultural rodent pests
    (Wiley, 2003) Stenseth, Nils Chr; Leirs, Herwig; Skonhoft, Anders; Davis, Stephen A; Pech, Roger P; Andreassent, Harry P; Singleton, Grant R.; Lima, Mauricio; Machang'u, Robert S; Makundi, Rhodes H; Zhang, Zhibin; Brown, Peter R; Shi, Dazhao; Wan, Xinrong
    Mice, rats, and other rodents threaten food production and act as reservoirs for disease throughout the world. In Asia aldne, the rice loss every year caused by rodents could feed about 200 million people. Damage to crops in Africa and South America is equally dramatic. Rodent control often comes too late, is inefficient, or is considered too expensive. Using the multimammate mouse (Mastomys natalensis) in Tanzania and the house mouse (Mus domesticus) in southeastern Australia as primary case studies, we demonstrate how ecology and economics can be combined to identify management strategies to make rodent control work more efficiently than it does today. Three more rodent-pest systems - including two from Asia, the rice-field rat (Rattus argentiventer) and Brandt's vole (Microtus brandti), and one from I South America, the leaf-eared mouse (Phyllotis darwini) - are presented within the same bio-economic per- spective. For all these species, the ability to relate outbreaks to interannual climatic variability creates the potential to assess the economic benefits of forecasting rodent outbreaks.
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    New Leptospira serovar Sokoine of serogroup Icterohaemorrhagiae from cattle in Tanzania
    (Microbiology Society, 2006-04) Mgode, Georgies; Machang'u, Robert S; Goris, Marga; Engelberts, Mirjam F M
    The prevalence of leptospirosis is generally high in domestic animals and rodents in Tanzania. Identification of Leptospira isolates from cattle was carried out to establish prevalent Leptospira serovars. Serological typing was done based on monoclonal antibodies and the standard cross-agglutination absorption test. Molecular typing involved pathogenic- and saprophytic-specific PCRs and a PCR specifically amplifying DNA from the species Leptospira kirschneri. DNA fingerprinting with primers derived from sequences of insertion elements IS1500 and IS1533 was carried out. Both serological and molecular characterization indicated that one of the Leptospira isolates, coded RM1, represents a new serovar of the species L. kirschneri of serogroup Icterohaemorrhagiae. The serovar name Sokoine is proposed for this new Leptospira isolate.