African animal trypanosomoses, caused by single-celled protozoan parasites of the genus Trypanosoma and transmitted exclusively through the bite of tsetse flies of the genus Glossina, remain one of the most formidable constraints on livestock productivity across sub-Saharan Africa. The disease devastates cattle herds, undermines plough-based agriculture, and imposes economic losses that ripple through rural communities already living at the edge of poverty. What makes the problem especially intractable is the ecology: tsetse flies feed on a wide range of vertebrate hosts, including wildlife that can carry trypanosomes without apparent illness, meaning that protected areas can act as reservoirs from which infection spills over into domestic animals and, occasionally, into people themselves.

Mozambique is a particularly instructive place to study this dynamic. The country harbours four main tsetse species, and pathogenic trypanosomes circulate widely in both wildlife and livestock. As human populations grow and agricultural activity intensifies around the edges of national parks, the interfaces where people, cattle, and wild animals meet have expanded, raising the risk of disease transmission in both directions. To understand exactly what is happening at these contact zones, the team concentrated its fieldwork on two contrasting landscapes: Maputo National Park in the south of the country and Gorongosa National Park in the centre, together with the agricultural buffer zones that surround each protected area.

The field effort was substantial. Using traps deployed inside the parks and in their buffer zones, the researchers collected 2,291 tsetse flies representing four species: Glossina austeni, Glossina brevipalpis, Glossina morsitans and Glossina pallidipes. Each specimen was identified using standard taxonomic keys, and a subsample of 200 flies was then selected for whole-body DNA extraction. From that genetic material, the team amplified and sequenced several molecular barcodes, targeting the internal transcribed spacer region to identify trypanosomes, mitochondrial markers to trace blood meal sources, and the 16S ribosomal RNA gene to profile the bacterial microbiome living inside each fly.

The trypanosome results were striking. Overall infection prevalence ranged from 65 to 90 percent depending on the fly species, an extraordinarily high parasite burden that underscores how intensively trypanosomes circulate in these landscapes. Seven distinct Trypanosoma species or subspecies were detected across the sampled flies. Trypanosoma brucei, the species group that includes the parasites responsible for human sleeping sickness, was the most abundant, found in 35 percent of flies, followed by Trypanosoma godfreyi at 20 percent. The team also identified Trypanosoma congolense Kilifi, Trypanosoma congolense Savannah, Trypanosoma simiae, Trypanosoma simiae Tsavo and Trypanosoma vivax, a roster that spans the full spectrum of parasites responsible for wasting diseases in cattle, pigs and other livestock.

Just as revealing was the blood meal analysis. By sequencing host DNA remaining in the flies’ guts, the researchers identified 17 different vertebrate host species, with wildlife predominating over domestic animals. Two hosts stood out at the top of the list: warthogs accounted for 26 percent of identified blood meals, and humans accounted for 25 percent. That human blood appears so frequently in the diet of these flies is a sobering finding, because it demonstrates that the ecological circuit connecting wild reservoirs, vectors and people is not hypothetical but an everyday occurrence. Cattle and other domestic animals also featured among the identified sources, confirming that livestock are woven into the same transmission network rather than standing apart from it.

The microbiome profiling added a third layer to the picture. Inside the flies, the dominant bacterial symbionts were Wigglesworthia and Wolbachia, two genera with well-known roles in tsetse biology. Wigglesworthia is an obligate mutualist housed in specialised bacteriomes that supplies nutrients the fly cannot obtain from its blood-only diet, and it has been implicated in vector competence and fertility. Wolbachia, by contrast, is a notorious reproductive manipulator that can bias host sex ratios and is being explored worldwide as a tool for controlling insect-borne diseases. Mapping which bacteria coexist with which parasites in which fly species provides raw material for future biocontrol strategies that might exploit these internal partnerships.

Perhaps the most important analytical finding concerns what actually shapes this entire system. When the researchers modelled the relationships among trypanosome diversity, host selection and microbiome composition, they found that the species of tsetse fly was the dominant explanatory factor, while location, meaning the difference between the parks and their surrounding buffer zones, played only a secondary role. In other words, the biology of the vector itself, rather than the immediate landscape it inhabits, is the strongest organising force in the transmission cycle. A constrained ordination analysis of blood meal variation showed that tsetse species together explained 96 percent of the total variance in community composition, a statistically significant association that highlights how tightly each fly species is bound to its own host preferences and parasite suite.

This species-level structure has practical consequences. Different Glossina species occupy different ecological niches, prefer different hosts, and harbour different combinations of trypanosomes, so a single blanket intervention is unlikely to succeed everywhere. Control programmes in the Gorongosa region, where G. morsitans and G. pallidipes dominate, may need different tactics from those around Maputo, where G. austeni and G. brevipalpis prevail. The finding that wildlife, particularly warthogs, sustain so many blood meals suggests that reservoir management and vector control must be designed together, and the prominence of humans in the blood meal record argues for surveillance of human African trypanosomosis even in areas where it is not currently considered a major clinical problem.

The study’s authors frame their results within a One Health perspective, the recognition that human, animal and environmental health are inseparable. By documenting the full diversity of vectors, parasites, hosts and microbes at the conservation–agriculture interface, the research provides the evidence base needed to design targeted, locally appropriate control strategies rather than generic ones. Funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme through the COMBAT project, which aims to control and progressively minimise the burden of animal trypanosomosis, the work demonstrates how molecular tools can transform our understanding of neglected tropical disease systems. As agricultural frontiers continue to press against Africa’s protected areas, studies like this one make clear that the fate of livestock, wildlife and people will be decided in the shared landscapes between them, one tsetse bite at a time.

Subject of Research: Tsetse fly-borne trypanosome transmission, blood meal hosts and microbiome diversity at wildlife–livestock–human interfaces in Mozambique

Article Title: Tsetse flies, trypanosomes, hosts and microbiome diversity at agricultural–conservation interfaces in Mozambique

Article References: Brito, D. R. A., Mulandane, F. C., Cossa, N. V., Mucache, H. N., Moo-Millan, J. I., Manzanilla, V., Boulangé, A., Waleckx, E., & Neves, L. (2026). Tsetse flies, trypanosomes, hosts and microbiome diversity at agricultural–conservation interfaces in Mozambique. Parasites & Vectors. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13071-026-07660-2

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s13071-026-07660-2

Keywords: tsetse flies, trypanosomes, African animal trypanosomosis, Mozambique, Glossina, blood meals, microbiome, Wigglesworthia, Wolbachia, One Health, wildlife reservoirs, metabarcoding

The scale of the effort is considerable. For the tsetse component, the team assembled 3,087 trapping records from 2,864 distinct trapping locations, covering 26,121 flies caught in the field. On the disease side, 740 herd-level records were compiled from 393 survey sites, encompassing 26,653 animals tested for infection. Before this work, such data existed only in fragmented form, held in project reports, ministry archives and the memories of field veterinarians. In most endemic countries, information on where tsetse flies occur and where trypanosomosis strikes is available only at the country level, poorly harmonized and effectively unusable for rigorous spatial analysis. The Ghanaian team set out to change that, standardizing every record, assigning coordinates where possible and centralizing everything in one database.

The atlas confirms that both the vector and the disease remain widespread across Ghana, but it also reveals a strikingly uneven picture. Of the ten tsetse species historically reported from the country, only three were detected in the compiled records: Glossina tachinoides, Glossina palpalis and Glossina morsitans. Each occupies a distinct ecological niche. G. palpalis, a riverine species favoring the shaded vegetation along watercourses, is the only one with a truly country-wide distribution. G. tachinoides, also riverine but more tolerant of drier conditions, is concentrated in the northern reaches of the country. G. morsitans, a savanna species, survives only in smaller, fragmented populations that are mainly confined to protected areas, a pattern that suggests habitat change has squeezed this species into refuges where woodland and wildlife persist.

That contraction of G. morsitans is more than a curiosity of biogeography. Tsetse flies are the sole biological vectors of trypanosomes, the single-celled parasites that cause African animal trypanosomosis, known historically as nagana. The disease remains a major constraint to sustainable livestock production and food security across vast areas of sub-Saharan Africa, depressing milk yields, causing weight loss and infertility, and killing animals outright in acute infections. Where the fly goes, the parasite follows, and where the fly retreats, farmers gain the chance to keep more productive breeds of cattle that would otherwise quickly sicken. Mapping the vector with precision is therefore the first step in any rational control strategy, because it tells decision-makers exactly where interventions will pay off and where they are unnecessary.

The atlas also documents a rare success story. In the Upper West region, major tsetse control operations were carried out in 2010, and the reductions in fly densities achieved then appear to have been sustained over the following years. Sustained suppression of a tsetse population is notoriously difficult, since the insects are highly mobile and can recolonize cleared areas from neighboring territories. The persistence of the Upper West gains suggests that the combination of methods deployed there, and the ecological conditions of the region, allowed control benefits to endure. For a country weighing the costs of renewed campaigns, that kind of longitudinal evidence, drawn directly from the atlas’s time-stamped trapping records, is exactly the sort of information that has been missing from national planning.

On the disease side, the atlas paints a picture dominated by cattle, which account for almost 90 percent of the collected data. The average prevalence of bovine trypanosomosis measured with the buffy coat technique, a microscopic method that concentrates parasites from blood samples for direct observation, is 7.7 percent, based on 825 positive animals out of 10,766 tested. The buffy coat technique was applied to more than two thirds of the randomly selected samples, making it the backbone of the national prevalence estimate. But the atlas’s numbers also expose a well-known technical trap in trypanosomosis epidemiology: the apparent prevalence of the disease depends heavily on the diagnostic tool used to detect it.

More sensitive but less frequently deployed diagnostics tell a different story. Antibody-detecting enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays, which reveal past exposure to trypanosomes rather than active infection, returned a prevalence of 22 percent, with 720 positives among 3,277 samples. Polymerase chain reaction, which amplifies parasite DNA and can detect infections that microscopy misses, measured 17 percent, with 332 positives among 1,949 samples. The gap between these figures and the buffy coat result is not a contradiction but a lesson in method: microscopic examination only catches infections with enough parasites circulating in the blood to be seen, while serology and molecular tools cast a wider net. For planners, the atlas’s side-by-side presentation of these estimates provides a realistic range within which the true burden of the disease lies, and a reminder that comparisons between regions or years must always account for the diagnostic method used.

The atlas is not a one-off publication but a living instrument. The database was already developed by 2018 and has been regularly updated ever since, and it now serves as the pillar of data management for the Tsetse and Trypanosomosis Control Unit. Crucially, it is being used to measure and drive the country’s progress along the progressive control pathway for African animal trypanosomosis, a staged framework endorsed by international bodies that guides endemic countries from ad hoc, localized interventions toward coordinated, area-wide suppression and, ultimately, elimination of the disease where feasible. By quantifying where flies persist and where infection rates fall, the atlas gives Ghana an objective yardstick for each step of that journey, replacing anecdote and optimism with georeferenced evidence.

The open data policy accompanying the atlas multiplies its potential impact. The full database has been released as supplementary material, allowing researchers, modelers and control programs within and beyond Ghana to interrogate the records, build predictive maps, and design targeted studies. This matters beyond Ghana’s borders: tsetse flies and the trypanosomes they carry affect more than three dozen African countries, and national atlases of this kind, when combined, could support continental-scale analyses of vector distribution and disease risk under changing climates and land use. Ghana’s experience also offers a template for other endemic nations whose data remain scattered, showing that decades of routine fieldwork can be rescued from obscurity and turned into a strategic asset.

The initiative was funded primarily by the Government of Ghana through its support to the control unit, with assistance from the Food and Agriculture Organization under the Programme Against African Trypanosomosis, backing from the Government of Italy, support from the Gates Foundation for the atlas’s finalization and publication, and technical cooperation from the International Atomic Energy Agency related to the sterile insect technique as a component of area-wide tsetse management. For the farmers of northern Ghana whose cattle face the daily threat of infection, the atlas may seem an abstract achievement. But its authors argue the opposite: knowing precisely where the enemy stands is the foundation of every practical victory to come, and after thirty years of data, Ghana finally has the map.

Subject of Research: Mapping tsetse fly distribution and African animal trypanosomosis prevalence in Ghana using a national georeferenced database

Article Title: A national atlas of tsetse flies and African animal trypanosomosis in Ghana

Article References: Anderson, B., Adam, Y., Mahama, C., Sakara, Y., Sottie, E., Paone, M., & Cecchi, G. (2026). A national atlas of tsetse flies and African animal trypanosomosis in Ghana. Parasites & Vectors. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13071-026-07725-2

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s13071-026-07725-2

Keywords: tsetse flies, Glossina, African animal trypanosomosis, Ghana, livestock, parasitology, GIS, atlas, epidemiology, vector control, food security, FAO