Wednesday, June 6, 2007 - 4:30 PM
316

Macroinvertebrate community structure and function in wetlands of Ghana, Africa, with implications for Buruli ulcer disease

Ryan K. Kimbirauskas, MS, Mollie D. McIntosh, M. Eric Benbow, and Richard W. Merritt. Department of Entomology, Michigan State University, 243 Natural Resources, East Lansing, MI 48824

Buruli ulcer (Mycobacterium ulcerans infection) is an emerging skin disease resulting in ulcerations that can lead to severe and lasting morbidity.  This disease is primarily found in tropical-subtropical climates with the highest number of cases occurring in developing nations.  Mode of transmission is unclear; however, incidence of human infection is commonly linked to freshwater environments, with high prevalence associated with increased land use and decreased water quality.  Research has also implicated aquatic invertebrates as environmental reservoirs of M. ulcerans and that aquatic biting insects may be potential vectors of BU to humans, yet, much is still unknown regarding the ecology of these insect communities and pathogen distribution.  Our objectives were to employ multivariate ordination techniques to identify invertebrate taxa, functional feeding groups (FFG) and water quality variables among sites grouped according to 1) BU incidence 2) pathogen detection in the aquatic habitat.  During August 2005, invertebrates from littoral habitats of twenty waterbodies from Ghana, Africa, were sampled using standard bioassessment techniques.   Preliminary results suggest invertebrate trophic structure is highly variable among sites grouped according to human incidence.  Grouping sites according to pathogen detection rates may improve the ability to identify microbe-invertebrate-human interactions important in the transmission of this understudied disease. 

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