Abstract:
Public health, Veterinary and Food Security is greatly threatened by the scourging menace of tsetse and trypanosomiasis in Africa. Sampling was done in Enugu (Enugu south), Edo (Esan south east) and Delta (Aniocha North) Local Government Areas of Southern Nigeria. The Study was conducted between July and November. Three biconical traps were deployed along gallery forest in each of the study area for 72 hours and recovered intermittently. Harvested samples were subjected to morphological and molecular analysis. Genomic DNA was isolated from the whole tsetse fly using genomic DNA extraction kit. Identification and characterization of tsetse flies were done using cytochrome oxidase I and Internal transcribed spacer. Sequenced data were further subjected to phylogenetic analysis. A total of 61 flies was collected during the survey. The mean number of tsetse collected in relation to traps from Enugu south , Esan south east and Aniocha north were 4.67 ± 5.83 (mean ± standard deviation), 0.11 ± 0.33 and 2 ± 2.65 respectively. Tsetse fly from Enugu south constituted 68.85% with apparent density 4.7 f/t/d compared to 1.64% (0.1f/t/d) and 29.51% (2.0 f/t/d) respectively from Esan south east and Aniocha north. The difference in trappings of tsetse fly from Enugu and Edo was significant based on Kruskal-Walis H test (χ2 = 8.294, df = 2, p = 0.016). Most importantly, Morphological and Molecular identification revealed the predominant species in Southern Nigeria to be Glosinna palpalis palpalis. The phylogenetic analysis revealed that the flies in both regions had a common ancestry as the fell into the same clade. Although, CO1 gene separated flies into two clusters while the ITS1 had a mixed cluster. It is therefore needful to investigate other genetic and nuclear markers that can be utilized in the identification of tsetse fly in the face of speciation due to climate change. The presence of these fly species (G.p.palpalis) in the study community in Enugu state, is a great public health threat as they have been implicated for the endemicity of Human African Trypanosomiasis in South-south region over decade.
