The Application of Ecological Research Methods to the Tsetse (Glossina SPP.) Problem in Tanganyika Territory: A Preliminary Account

Ecology, defined by Haeckel in i869 as that science concerned with the reciprocal relations of organisms and the external world, hitherto has been occupied largely with the development of concepts and methodology. In agriculture and forestry, alone, has it been employed to any significant extent as a means of gaining knowledge upon subjects of economic import. The results being derived by the ecological investigations of the Forest Service and Biological Survey in the United States Department of Agriculture support in no uncertain manner the view that crop-production, grazing control, stock-raising, and silviculture can advance only to the degree in which they are directed along ecological lines-they being but applied ecology. In the more elevated sphere of human relations, endeavor, and destiny, the suggestive work of Huntingdon and others indicates that in the realms of politics and executive government, the concepts and methods of ecology should do much to elucidate what is now profound. Ecology, until very recently, never had been harnessed as the principal for the extraction of fundamental truths relating to a biological problem as bewildering in its complexity, as comprehensive in its interrelations, as that wide-ranging, relentless scourge of vast areas of the Dark Continent-tsetse. On account of the many-sided nature of the tsetse problem, ecological methods not only find considerable scope, but further, meet the opportunity of proving their worth in a subject that so far has defied solution. Given fair working facilities, given time in which to evolve a methodology suited to the subject, ecology should go a long way toward making possible the control or the elimination of the vectors of human and animal trypanosomiasis. The general objects of this communication are to draw attention to the interesting feature of a great biological problem being approached by the methods of the ecologist, to define the working concept, and to consider briefly the methodology employed and employable.