Page 40 - VHSA - Onderstepoort 100 Years - Part 3

OND
ERSTEPOORT 100
J.G.H. (Jason) Londt obtained a doctorate in entomology at Rhodes University and joined the Section of Entomology at the Institute in 1975. He produced a number of excellent papers on the biology of B. decoloratus before taking up a position at the Natal Museum, of which he later became the Director. B. (Ben) Sutherland joined the Section of Entomology at the Institute with an MSc degree in Entomo- logy awarded by the University of Pretoria. He researched various aspects of the life cycle of the stable fly Stomoxys calcitrans and was awarded a doctoral degree for this work.
G. (Gert) Venter joined the staff of the Institute in 1981. His studies have involved determining the competence of various species of Culicoides midges as vectors of viruses that affect animals and humans (also see Part 3: Virology). R. (Rudi) Meiswinkel, who at the time held no formal university
qualification, joined the Section of Entomology in 1983. He soon became involved in research on Culicoides and more particularly in the taxonomy of these midges, becoming an expert on the South African species. His beautifully illustrated publications on Culicoides earned him an MSc degree from the University of Pretoria. Karin Kappmeier Green joined the Institute in 1991 and obtained a PhD for her research on the control and eradication of tsetse flies in north-eastern KwaZulu-Natal.
A. (Abdalla) Latif graduated as a veterinarian in Sudan and has extensive experience of ticks and tick-borne diseases in Africa. He joined the Institute staff in 2004, and currently heads the Division of Parasitology. He has made a major contribution to the future of tick taxonomy in South Africa by establishing the Gertrud Theiler Tick Museum. In it are housed Gertrud Theiler’s tick collection, Jane Walker’s South African collection, Heloise Heyne’s collection and part of Ivan Horak’s collection. Many of the original working documents of these researchers and their card-index filing systems, as well as some of André Olwage’s original colour illustrations of ticks are housed in this museum.
D.A. (Dmitry) Apanaskevich, from the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg, joined Horak as a postdoctoral fellow in 2005. Although this fellowship was for only 2 years, he made major contributions towards the correct identification of two important South African ticks. He found that the bont-legged tick, hitherto known as Hyalomma marginatum turanicum, is actually Hyalomma glabrum, and the yellow dog tick known as Haemaphysalis leachi in South Africa is Haemaphysalis elliptica as described from the Cape of Good Hope by Koch in 1844. The latter finding is of particular note in that H. elliptica is the vector of the virulent strain of Babesia canis causing biliary fever in dogs
With C.J. Stutterheim, of Rand Afrikaans University, he investigated the role that red-billed oxpeckers play in the biological control of ticks. The stomach contents of 53 of these birds that they examined con- tained a total of 21 641 ticks, with a prefe- rence for species with short mouthparts, namely the blue tick, B. decoloratus and brown ticks belonging to the genus Rhipi- cephalus. They found that birds in captivity were able to reduce adult populations of the blue tick by 95%.
With R. Gothe, who had returned to
Germany, Bezuidenhout elucidated the role
of engorging female red-legged ticks, R.
evertsi evertsi in the aetiology of spring lamb
paralysis. They demonstrated that it was
only engorging female ticks of a certain
weight that produce the toxin responsible
for paralysis, and the occurrence and severity
of this paralysis is dependent upon the
number of engorging female ticks simul-
taneously reaching a weight of 15 to 21 mg in relation to the weight of the lamb. With Allette Malherbe, Bezuidenhout demonstrated that the females of only certain strains of H. truncatum (bont-legged ticks) produce a toxin responsible for the condition known as sweating sickness in domestic calves.
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Tick mouth parts (scanning electron microscopy)
PART 3
History of Individual Disciplines
1908-2008
Years