Project(s) of GTI scholarship holder NATURINDA Zerubabeeli

Sustainable land use and resilient livelihoods in the landslide-prone region of Mount Elgon, Uganda (SureLive)

Grantee: NATURINDA Zerubabeeli

Internship details

  • Years

    2015, 2016 and 2017

  • Training location

    Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences

  • Belgian supervisor

    Dr. Dekoninck Wouter

  • Studied organism (classification)

    Animalia – Arthropoda – Insecta – Hymenoptera – Formicidae

  • Reports

The Mt Elgon region in Eastern Uganda is confronted with very rapid environmental degradation, including rapid deforestation in up-slope areas, severe erosion and frequent landslides in mid-slope areas, and sedimentation and recurrent flooding in down-slope areas. This project aims at understanding the complex chain of causal links that can explain these land degradation processes and their ecological and economic effects; and at identifying and promoting effective strategies for more sustainable land use and for increasing the resilience of farm-households to environmental risks and shocks. As a part of the SureLive project this research is carried out on coffee certification in the Mt. Elgon region. The aim of this research is to analyze the impacts of coffee certification on small farmers’ livelihoods and on the sustainability of their management practices. Ants were selected as an indicator species to analyze the impact of different management strategies on biodiversity within the coffee gardens.

The GTI scholarship will allow Mr. Naturinda to process entomofauna samples at RBINS in Belgium after the field campaign planned from June to September 2015. Besides the access to specific material for entomology research (mounting equipment, an African reference collection, literature,…) he will be able to consult on a regular basis both experts such as Dr. Dekoninck and the large collections available at RBINS. This and the fact that the team will be able to work together in one place, will speed up the processing of the collected samples. The experience gained by spending a period working at RBINS will increase Mr. Naturinda’s professionalism and expertise in taxonomy and entomologic research and myrmecology in particular.

Additional documentation

 Presentation of Mr. Naturinda and Mr. Muhereze prepared for a symposium at RBINS that took place on December 9, 2015

Scientific papers

  • Vanderhaegen, K., Naturinda, Z., Kouakou, L. M. M., Vanderheyden, A., and Dekoninck, W. (2019). First record of the invasive longhorn crazy ant, Paratrechina longicornis (Latreille, 1802) (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) from Mt. Elgon, eastern Uganda. BioInvasions Rec. 8, 505–514. https://doi.org/10.3391/bir.2019.8.3.05