Wild Pigs as Hosts of Glossina vanhoofi Henrard and Trypanosoma suis Ochmann in the Central African Forest

Abstract

IN 1951 we found in Glossina brevipalpis from the Institute of Scientific Research in Central Africa's Mosso field station, Burundi, north-east of Lake Tanganyika, a trypanosome infection of the salivary glands similar to that noted by Burtt in 1942 near Amani, Tanganyika. Our rate of infection was very low; two infected flies out of 700 dissections of salivary glands (0.28 per cent) as compared with the low rates found also by Burtt (0.84 per cent), by Whitnall in 1934 (0.62 per cent) and by Brown in 1938 (1.14 per cent). Elsewhere we have stated¹ regarding the salivary gland infections that “we do not believe that this trypanosome is necessarily a polymorphic one as assumed by Burtt. Its morphology might be completely different from the trypanosomes of the salivary glands in G. palpalis and G. morsitans”. As many as 6,397 G. brevipalpis were examined during the period April 1952–April 1953 by E. Peel and M. Chardome in our laboratory. They discovered 1.09 per cent infection of the salivary glands and isolated strains which when transmitted cyclically to domesticated pigs, showed a monomorphic trypanosome identical with T. suis Ochmann. This trypanosome was originally recorded in East Africa, first by Ochmann (1905) from the domestic pig, and later in 1912 by Geisler and Mayer from the warthog: all these authors gave an inadequate description of this trypanosome. Preparations showing T. suis from the Congo were demonstrated by L. van den Berghe² at a laboratory meeting of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in January 1954, and it was finally adequately described by Peel and Chardome in 1954³ (preliminary announcement in 1953⁴) and its revival announced by Hoare the same year.