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...
Abstract: Late stage Human African Trypanosomiasis (HAT) is manifested by brain degeneration following infection by Trypanasoma brucei rhodensiense and Trypanasoma brucei gambiense parasites. This stage can only be treated with melarsoprol (Mel B) which inadvertently induces Post Treatment Reactive Encephalopathy (PTRE) and a mortality of 5% among HAT infected patients. This is an unacceptable mortality for a modern human drug. Investigations were conducted to establish the protective role o...
Abstract: The study was done at the Department of Animal Science, University of Manitoba. Two experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of β-mannanase on nutrient utilization and performance of laying hens. Experimental diets were based on soybean meal (SBM), corn and distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS). The first study was designed to evaluate the effect of β-mannanase (CTCZYME, CTC Bio Inc., Seoul, South Korea) on performance of laying hens and egg quality traits. A ...
Abstract: The cost of feed is one of the major constraints to dairy cattle production in sub-Saharan Africa. East Africa dairy development project is promoting several feed technologies for dairy cattle in order to reduce costs and increase milk production and profits. Research was conducted to identify factors that affect farmers’ uptake of feed technologies, cost of feed and factors driving dairy milk yield through improved technologies and practices. There has however been no studies re...
Abstract: Besides soil replenishment through manure application , the zero grazing production system also contributes towards smallholders' standards of living and poverty reduction. Its benefits are many and substantial; in western Kenya, the livestock farmers have adopted it. However, factors influencing its adoption are not known. It is also not certain whether the livestock farmers who practice zero grazing are knowledgeable of the cattle reproductive parameters or not which is key to ze...
Abstract: Researchers are often confronted with multinomial data in insect choice studies. Common choice models available to researchers for analysis of multinomial data include multinomial logit (MNL) and multinomial probit model (MNP). MNL relies on the Independence from Irrelevant Alternatives (IIA) assumption which is violated when choices are correlated resulting in overestimating the probability of selecting correlated alternatives. The more flexible MNP model relaxes IIA assumption an...
Abstract: Wildlife-livestock interfaces are hotspots for tick-borne livestock diseases, which cause high mortalities and morbidity. Wild bovines in these interfaces play a major role in maintaining tick vectors and tick-borne pathogens. This study explored the diversity of ticks infesting blue wildebeests (Connochaetes taurinus), cattle and sheep as well as the diversity of protozoan pathogens harboured by these ticks in the Maasai Mara which is one of the wildlife – livestock interfaces i...