Page 36 - VHSA - Onderstepoort 100 Years - Part 3

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ERSTEPOORT 100
R. (Rainer) Gothe, a German veterinarian, spent time with Gertrud Theiler at the Institute during the 1960s and pro- duced descriptions of all stages of development of the blue ticks B. decoloratus, Boophilus microplus, and the winter horse tick Margaropus winthemi. He collected fowl tampans, Argas walkerae in South Africa and took live specimens to Germany when he returned. There he studied the paralysis that these soft ticks cause in domestic poultry. Several years later he and J.D. (Dürr) Bezuidenhout unravelled some of the myste- ries surrounding spring lamb paralysis caused by the red- legged tick R. evertsi evertsi.
Jane B. Walker started her long working life when she was appointed as a Research Officer in the East African Veterinary Research Organization at Kabete in Kenya in 1949. She later moved to Muguga in that country when the laboratory there was completed. She was awarded an MSc degree as an external student by Liverpool University for a dissertation on the larvae and nymphs of ticks of the genus Rhipicephalus in East Africa in 1959, and was to become the world authority on this tick genus in years to come. Walker joined Gertrud Theiler at the Institute in 1966. With the late Gertrud Theiler, Walker must rank as one of the foremost tick taxonomists nurtured by this continent. She de- scribed and redescribed numerous species, and recognized the differences between the brown ear ticks Rhipicep- halus appendiculatus and Rhipicephalus zambeziensis, both
Bont ticks (Amblyomma hebraeum), vectors of heartwater
instrumental in transmitting the protozoan Theileria parva, the cause of East Coast fever and Corridor disease in cattle. During her time at the Institute Walker published books on the ticks of Tanzania with Guy Yeoman as senior author, of Kenya of which she was the sole author, and of Botswana as senior author. She also produced an annotated list of the ticks of southern Africa. The University of the Witwatersrand invited her to submit her published works towards the award of a DSc degree, and on the excellence of these publications the degree was conferred in 1982.
During the late 1980s Jane B. Walker teamed up with the artist A. (André) Olwage, and under her critical eye he produced colour illustrations of the Amblyomma spp. or bont ticks for a publication that she authored on the vectors of heartwater of domestic and wild ruminants. J.E. (Jim) Keirans, Curator of the United States National Tick Collection, visited Walker at the Institute twice during the 1990s and used
the opportunities to author two taxonomic papers. He was assisted in this by Olwage who produced beautiful colour illustrations of the male and female rhinoceros tick, Dermacentor rhinocerinus, for one of the publications, and line drawings of two ticks that infest hares for
the other. Walker retired on pension in 1990, but continued
to work at the Institute and with Keirans and Horak, authored the definitive taxonomic work, The genus Rhipicephalus (Acari Ixodidae): A guide to the brown ticks of the world. Again Olwage was responsible for the line drawings of the adult and immature stages of the 70 odd tick species that feature in this book as well as the maps that illustrate their geographic distributions. Walker remains an inspiration and sounding-board for the acarologists at Onderstepoort.
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PART 3
History of Individual Disciplines
1908-2008
Years