DNA barcoding of mosquito species deployed in bid to end elephantiasis

Experts say Africa's native fruits – so-called "lost crops" such as the baobab, marula and butterfruit – are a largely untapped resource that could combat malnutrition and promote environmental stability and rural development. Traditional fruits fed Africans for thousands of years before imported species such as banana, pineapple and papaya and, with renewed scientific and institutional support, could be due for a comeback.

African Conservation Fund

Understanding wildlife in African savannas

African wildlife struggles due to rising human population and development pressures, conflicts between people and animals, and changing climate patterns.

With JRS support, the African Conservation Fund (ACF) is constructing a database of rich information gathered over a 40-year study in southern Kenya, complemented by remote imagery and a mathematical model of large herbivore dynamics. The goal: to support through better information a range of national and regional biodiversity conservation initiatives, mapping and planning.

The effort will facilitate the integration and sharing of scattered institutional data, making them freely available.

World Health Organization – African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control

Renewing the use of river blindness-related data

The African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control – part of an international partnership to eliminate river blindness (Onchocerciasis) from sub-Saharan Africa, has collected biological information from thousands of miles of rivers over almost three decades.

With a grant from JRS Biodiversity Foundation, APOC is convening scientists who collected the data and others likely to find it useful in regional biodiversity studies. They will identify which data can be improved and how, work to resolve data ownership issues, choose data formats that will make it useful to future research, and prepare a proposal for future funding.

University of Cape Town

Southern African Reptile Conservation Assessment

South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland's remarkable range of reptiles includes the Nile crocodile, black mamba, puff adder, Cape cobra and many less notorious species that nonetheless play vital roles as predators and prey in the region's terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems. Incomplete and inaccessible distribution information in many separate databases undermined the establishment of conservation priorities.

The University of Cape Town's Southern African Reptile Conservation Assessment (SARCA), with funding from JRS and the South African National Biodiversity Institute, has assembled all known distributional data for the region's reptiles – about 130,000 records for over 400 species – in one database. Data gaps were filled through 24 field surveys, yielding more than 4,220 new distribution records and through an online public appeal to contribute reptile photos and accompanying geo-reference data. Over 6,700 records were received from about 350 contributors.