Mycobacteria in Terrestrial Small Mammals on Cattle Farms in Tanzania

The control of bovine tuberculosis and atypical mycobacterioses in cattle in developing countries is important but difficult because of the existence of wildlife reservoirs. In cattle farms in Tanzania, mycobacteria were detected in 7.3% of 645 small mammals and in cow's milk. The cattle farms were divided into “reacting” and “nonreacting” farms, based on tuberculin tests, and more mycobacteria were present in insectivores collected in reacting farms as compared to nonreacting farms. More mycobacteria were also present in insectivores as compared to rodents. All mycobacteria detected by culture and PCR in the small mammals were atypical mycobacteria. Analysis of the presence of mycobacteria in relation to the reactor status of the cattle farms does not exclude transmission between small mammals and cattle but indicates that transmission to cattle from another source of infection is more likely. However, because of the high prevalence of mycobacteria in some small mammal species, these infected animals can pose a risk to humans, especially in areas with a high HIV-prevalence as is the case in Tanzania

Mice, rats, and people: the bio-economics of agricultural rodent pests

Wiley is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Frontiers in Ecology and the EnvironmentMice, rats, and other rodents threaten food production and act as reservoirs for disease throughout the world. In Asia aldne, the rice loss every year caused by rodents could feed about 200 million people. Damage to crops in Africa and South America is equally dramatic. Rodent control often comes too late, is inefficient, or is considered too expensive. Using the multimammate mouse (Mastomys natalensis) in Tanzania and the house mouse (Mus domesticus) in southeastern Australia as primary case studies, we demonstrate how ecology and economics can be combined to identify management strategies to make rodent control work more efficiently than it does today. Three more rodent-pest systems - including two from Asia, the rice-field rat (Rattus argentiventer) and Brandt's vole (Microtus brandti), and one from I South America, the leaf-eared mouse (Phyllotis darwini) - are presented within the same bio-economic per- spective. For all these species, the ability to relate outbreaks to interannual climatic variability creates the potential to assess the economic benefits of forecasting rodent outbreaks