Biology Teaching in West Africa

Simulation games designed as training exercises have been used in a wide variety of fields. With the exception of medical education they have as yet been little used in teaching science. Lebemo is a game simulating research in bacterial genetics. The player has to manipulate data, interpret results, plan an overall strategy, and decide upon appropriate experimental protocols; a combination of features found in research and project work but rarely in traditional laboratory classes. In its present form Lebemo is self-instructional and takes a few hours to play. Lebemo and games like it might prove useful adjuncts to traditional laboratory classes and could perhaps replace more time-consuming project work.     

Museums and Archaeology in West Africa.

Museums and Archaeology in West Africa. Claude Daniel Ardouin. ed. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998.178 pp.     

Polygyny and polyandry in small ant societies

Social insects, ants in particular, show considerable variation in queen number and mating frequency resulting in a wide range of social structures. The dynamics of reproductive conflicts in insect societies are directly connected to the colony kin structure, thus, the study of relatedness patterns is essential in order to understand the evolutionary resolution of these conflicts. We studied colony kin structure and mating frequencies in two closely related Neotropical ant species Pachycondyla inversa and Pachycondyla villosa. These represent interesting model systems because queens found new colonies cooperatively but, unlike many other ant species, they may still co-exist when the colony becomes mature (primary polygyny). By using five specific and highly variable microsatellite markers, we show that in both species queens usually mate with two or more males and that cofounding queens are always unrelated. Polygynous and polyandrous colonies are characterized by a high genetic diversity, with a mean relatedness coefficient among worker nestmates of 0.27 (+/- 0.03 SE) for P. inversa and 0.31 (+/- 0.05 SE) for P. villosa. However, relatedness among workers of the same matriline is high (0.60 +/- 0.03 in P. inversa, 0.62 +/- 0.08 in P. villosa) since males that mated with the same queen are on average closely related. Hence, we have found a new taxon in social Hymenoptera with high queen-mating frequencies and with intriguing mating and dispersal patterns of the sexuals.     

The genusDaphnia in Cameroon,West Africa

Three species of the genusDaphnia are recorded from Cameroon.Daphnia obtusa was found in a single lake out of 37 sampled.Daphnia laevis was found in the same lake asD. obtusa and in two other lakes, whileD. rosea was found in three other lakes. All the lakes were at altitudes over 1 000 m. The records can be interpreted either as altitudinal survivals of continually dispersing species, or as relicts in an area whereDaphnia is usually very rare or absent.