Zika Forest

Zika Forest is a tropical forest near Entebbe in Uganda. Zika means "overgrown" in the Luganda language. As property of the Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI) of Entebbe, it is protected and restricted to scientific research. The forest covers an area of about 25 hectares (62 acres) next to the swamps of Waiya Bay, an inlet of Lake Victoria. Easily accessible and combining several ecosystems, Zika Forest is very suitable to the study of mosquitoes. According to UVRI, the size of the research area of the forest is about 12 ha. The forest has a rich biodiversity in plants and moths, and is home to about 40 types of mosquitoes. UVRI also maintains an insectarium.

The forest is accessible to visitors for bird watching. Former US President Jimmy Carter once visited the forest for that purpose.

Mosquito studies

Investigations of mosquitoes at Zika started in 1946 as part of the study of human yellow fever at the Yellow Fever Research Institute (renamed East African Virus Research Institute in 1950, and then the Uganda Virus Research Institute in 1977), established in Entebbe, Uganda in 1936 by the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1947, the Zika virus, an arbovirus named after the forest, was isolated from a Rhesus monkey stationed at Zika. In 1960, a 36.6 metres (120 ft) steel tower was moved from Mpanga Forest to Zika to study the vertical distribution of mosquitoes, allowing for a comprehensive study of the mosquito population in 1964. In that same year, the Zika virus was described in a mosquito collection from Zika. No routine mosquito collections were performed for about the next four decades, while human activities encroached on the forest. An updated mosquito collection finally took place in 2009 and 2010.

Forest

A forest is a large area of land covered with trees or other woody vegetation. Hundreds of more precise definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing and ecological function. According to the widely used United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization definition, forests covered an area of four billion hectares (15 million square miles) or approximately 30 percent of the world's land area in 2006.

Forests are the dominant terrestrial ecosystem of Earth, and are distributed across the globe. Forests account for 75% of the gross primary productivity of the Earth's biosphere, and contain 80% of the Earth's plant biomass.

Forests at different latitudes form distinctly different ecozones: boreal forests near the poles tend to consist of evergreens, while tropical forests near the equator tend to be distinct from the temperate forests at mid-latitude. The amount of precipitation and the elevation of the forest also affects forest composition.

Forest (name)

Forest is both a surname and a given name. Notable people with the name include:

Surname:

Given name:

Forest (Mbeya ward)

Kata ya Foresti (English: Forest Ward) is an administrative ward in the Mbeya Urban district of the Mbeya Region of Tanzania. According to the 2002 census, the ward has a total population of 7,209.

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