Activities under this section aim at gaining deep understanding of the biology and ecology of agricultural vertebrate and invertebrate pests including rodents, quelea quelea, armyworms and locusts.
Activities under this section aim at gaining a deep understanding of the biology and ecology of disease reservoir animals as well as arthropod vectors and disease microbes they transmit to humans.
The examples of priority arthropods and reservoir animals include fleas, ticks, mosquitoes, tsetse flies, black flies, sandflies, cockroaches, bats and rodents. Examples of vector-borne and other zoonotic diseases include plague, malaria, dengue, lymphatic filariasis, leptospirosis, tick-borne relapsing fever etc.
Activities in this section are focused on developing and evaluating (small- and large-scale) pest management and diagnosis technologies. Also, it is involved in improving diagnosis of animal and human diseases based on the use of African Giant Rats. So far, we have successfully used these Rats to diagnose Tuberculosis in humans; and are exploring other avenues. Our quench is to develop simple, cost-effective and ecologically sound pest management and diagnosis technologies deployable under resource-poor settings..