Based on available sequence data, a phylogeny of small ruminant lentiviruses (SRLV) was established for env, pol, gag and LTR fragments using maximum likelihood, neighbour-joining and minimum evolution reconstruction techniques. To reconstruct topologies as accurately as possible, phylogenetic parameters like base composition, percentage divergences, kappa, the gamma shape parameter alpha and c...

Tropical Africa contains almost one tenth of the world's sheep and over a quarter of its goats. Small ruminant production throughout this area takes place entirely under traditional systems, and since the meat produced is mostly for home consumption, a great deal of it escapes official marketing channels. As a result there is an undeniable lack of knowledge as to the part played by sheep and go...

Despite the large number of collection records, there are no recent collections of ixodid ticks of this magnitude in the Waterberg area, Limpopo Province, South Africa. Free-living ticks on a commercial game farm were obtained by a total of 432 drag-samples in eight sample sites from September 2003 to August 2008. The ticks were collected to establish the difference between tick species and den...

Ticks were collected at irregular intervals from December 1995 to November 1996 from wildlife on Mtendere Game Ranch in the Chisamba District of Central Province, Zambia. Total collections were made from two species of ground-nesting birds and 20 species of small and large mammals. Thirteen species/subspecies of ixodid ticks were recovered. Rhipicephalus appendiculatus was the most abundant, fo...