IRD

Partner 4 – Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)

IRD, Montpellier-Rabat, France, is a French public research institute working for the development of Southern countries, reporting to the Ministries responsible for research and overseas development. IRD is managing for more than sixty years research, consultancy and capacity building activities in Africa, the Mediterranean basin, Asia, Latin America and French overseas territories. IRD researchers address major development challenges regarding environment, sustainable development of living resources, social studies and health. The UR016 of IRD focused on biology and control of arthropods of medical interest. The research activities focus on biology, physiology, molecular phylogenetics, population genetics of the pathogens and the host vector that transmit them, both in vitro and in natura.

The study of the IRD Team will be oriented towards various aspects of the Leishmania - sand fly relationship and diversity but will primarily focused on the molecular and biological diversity of the sandfly-Leishmania couple mainly in Morocco and to analyze results in the light of what is known in France . The team consists of 2 senior researcher and 2 assistant professors , Denis Sereno (Senior researcher), Anne Laure Banuls (Senior Researcher), Christophe Ravel (Assist. Prof), Jerome Depaquit (Assist. Prof.), 1 post doc student (Souad Guernaoui), 2 PhD Students. They will be involved in the study of sandfly and Leishmania diversity in Morocco and France. Major part of the activity of the group will concern distribution of sand fly species of the subgenus Larroussius, their population genetics and the diversity of the Leishmania strain they transmit (I.e hybrids) in Mediterranean (Morocco and France).

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