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Tsetse Fly and Big Game in Southern Rhodesia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 July 2009

Rupert W. Jack
Rupert W. Jack
Affiliation:
Government Entomologist, Southern Rhodesia.
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Extract

In Southern Rhodesia conditions are better than in most other parts of Africa for gathering information concerning the distribution of tsetse in the past, and perhaps even in the present. This is due to a combination of two factors, namely, that only one species of tsetse, Glossina morsitans, is found within our borders, and that the territory, in comparison with the Central African States, contains and has contained a relatively large European population. The first factor eliminates the possibility of confusion of species in connexion with the evidence forthcoming, at least in the case of those able to distinguish tsetse from other species of bloodsucking flies, whilst the second provides a more reliable source of information than the native.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Bulletin of Entomological Research , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , September 1914 , pp. 97 - 110
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1914

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References

* [As it might be inferred from this statement that fly was present in all the areas coloured blue m Map I up till the rinderpest, it is well to explain that this was by no means the case. As regards the large blue area to the north of the Limpopo, the writer traversed the eastern quarter of this in 1893, being camped for ten days on the north bank of the Limpopo, and there was certainly no fly then anywhere near the Old Hunters' Road, along which waggons were frequently passing. Mr. F. C. Selous, who has examined Mr. Jack's map, has expressed his conviction that there was no fly in any part of this area in 1896; though it existed to the east of the Nuanetsi River and at the junction of the Shashi and Shashani Rivers—areas not indicated on the map. Similarly, he can assert that the fly-belt shown to the west of the Victoria Falls had disappeared by 1888, and is of opinion that much of the fly to the east of the Falls had also gone by that date. He has never known fly to occur in the Ramakwabane area shown in the map since he first went there in 1872. There are various well authenticated cases of the disappearance of fly before any wholesale destruction of game, but Mr. Jack admittedly does not attempt to deal with that aspect of the question. (Of. Stevenson Hamilton, Bull. Ent. Res. ii, 1911, pp. 113–116).—Ed.]

† Since writing these notes the writer has received indirect native testimony to the effect that tsetse never died out altogether in the neighbourhood of Tchetchenini Hill after the rinderpest.

* [The researches referred to concerned G. palpalis and not G. morsitans; moreover, the later observations of Duke, Carpenter and Fiske indicate that the conclusions cited are probably erroneous, for they have found reptiles to be a highly favoured source of food for G. palpalis under natural conditions.—ED.]

* [In a series of captured G. morsitans examined by Lloyd in Northern Rhodesia, he found that of the specimens in which the blood content could be identified 15 per cent, contained non-mammalian blood.—ED.]

† On admittedly somewhat slender grounds Mr. Lloyd, of the Luangwa Sleeping Sickness Commission, is inclined to the belief that morsitans does not thrive on avian blood in the same way as it does on mammalian.—Bull. Ent. Research, iii, part 3.

* Dr. R. E. McConnell's observations on the actions of his pet monkeys when attacked by tsetse show that making a meal of monkey's blood is not without danger to the fly itself. In connexion with a species to which the prolonged survival of the individual is of much importance as it is for Glossina, this may not be without significance.

* The species has never been protected under the Game Laws.