End of the road for illegal bushmeat trade in East Africa: Establishing transboundary surveillance by high resolution melting analysis of vertebrate molecular barcodes

icipe has recently developed cost-effective high resolution melting (HRM) analysis approaches for rapidly identifying diverse blood-meal host DNA sequences in blood-fed mosquitoes. This project is adapting this unique vertebrate DNA species identification approach to accelerate forensic sequence evidence pipelines required for the prosecution of wildlife/bushmeat traders and facilitate large-scale surveillance of potential wildlife products. We will also monitor changes in vector blood-feeding patterns before and after wildlife translocations, to identify their potential impacts on disease transmission.

Donor:

• USAID-PEER funding

Collaborators:

• Kenya Wildlife Service
• Tanzania National Parks
• National Museums of Kenya
• Smithsonian Institute