Onchocerca ochengi: assessment of the Simulium vectors in North Cameroon

In the savanna areas of tropical Africa, cattle are frequently infected with the filaria Onchocerca ochengi. This parasite is closely related to Onchocerca volvulus, the causative agent of human onchocerciasis (river blindness), and is capable of developing in the same vector, Simulium damnosum s.l. In North Cameroon, where both O. ochengi and O. volvulus are endemic, we carried out a field study (reported in this and 2 following papers) to examine to which extent the transmission of the 2 parasite species overlap and what influence this has on the epidemiology of human onchocerciasis. In this paper we report our experiments to determine which of the S. damnosum species in North Cameroon act as vectors of O. ochengi, how efficiently they do so and whether other Simulium species play a vector role. To this end, infected cattle were exposed near 5 rivers in different geographical areas. Among 14 Simulium species identified as aquatic and/or adult stages at these rivers, only 6 (S. squamosum, S. damnosum s.s., S. sirbanum, S. bovis, S. wellmanni and S. hargreavesi) were found to bite cattle in important numbers in at least 1 of the sites. The 3 species of the S. damnosum complex were all capable of ingesting microfilariae (mf) of O. ochengi and developing a proportion of them to infective larvae (L3). Whereas S. squamosum and S. damnosum s.s., the prevailing vectors in the Guinea and Sudan savanna respectively, showed a high vector competence (17% of ingested mf developed to L3), S. sirbanum, which was much rarer in both areas, appeared to have a much lower susceptibility (2%). Other boophilic Simulium species were only seen in certain sites and seasons, being either incapable of ingesting important numbers of O. ochengi mf from body regions where these mf were abundant (S. bovis, S. hargreavesi); not able to support the development of ingested mf to L3 (S. wellmanni), or bit cattle preferentially in the ears, where O. ochengi mf do not occur (S. hargreavesi). We conclude that in North Cameroon members of the S. damnosum complex are the only important vectors of O. ochengi, with S. squamosum and S. damnosum s.s. being the main vectors.