Tsetse Fly Quotes

“As increasing human population and fires from the savannah are continuously eating into the forest belt, it seems likely that the distribution of the forest members of the fusca group will continue to retract. In 1912 Simpson described how G. Fusca was found in Sierra Leone along a certain 37-mile stretch of road which ran through thickly wooded country skirting mountains densely clothed in thick forest; in 1946 I visited the area to find no fusca, but bare mountains, grassland, and only a few patches of low secondary thicket.”
― T. A. M Nash, Africa's bane: the tsetse fly

“Some 200 miles south of Gadau, where the climate is less severe, morsitans still has to vacate log sites in the dry season and breeds in the riverine vegetation of stream-beds together with tachinoides and palpalis. Still farther south, and approaching the forest belt, morsitans breeds under small, deciduous, umbrella-like Gardenia erubescens bushes in the savannah, until the grass fires destroy the leaves when the female larviposits under small thickets of evergreen Combretrum micranthum in eroded, waterless gullies.
This seasonal shifting of the breeding grounds is not confined to West Africa. Recently Glasgow found that in a hot part of Tanzania morsitans breeds under logs in the wet season, but after the fires prefers rot holes in trees, returning to logs when the rains break. Burtt has found that pallipides breeds in the early dry season in deciduous thickets, but moves after the fires to evergreen thicket along the main watercourse. The wet-season site defeated him.
When investigating a strange area, forget past experience; instead, consider the climatic conditions prevailing and the vegetation available, and remember the basic principles. The tsetse is a most adaptable insect: pupae have even been found on the floors of native huts.”
― T. A. M Nash