School for Climate Studies (SCS) and Centre for Invasion Biology (CIB) Annual Research Meeting
Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with the CIB-ARM which is hosted annually in November. This year (after a 2 year interim), we see the new SCS-CIB ARM: a joint venture where Masters and PhD students present on their latest research. This event provides an important forum for networking for post-docs and students alike. For the CIB, the entire Core Team is invited to come together with their students from universities up and down South Africa.
Policy from Science
This year, there was a promient flavour of policy from science both at the national and international level. Prof. Melodie McGeogh (Monash University) provided a plenary from her perspectives after participating in the recent IPBES report Thematic Assessment Report on Invasive Alien Species and their Control.
In addition, Peter Lukey (Chief Director: Environment Knowledge and Information at DFFE) provided an overview of his experience as a policy maker in the South African government.
In addition to these plenary talks, we had a host of marvellous talks from postgraduate students from the SCS and CIB. This included Jonathan Bell who presented an update on his MSc work on improving the efficacy of the Gutteral Toad eradication programme.
Another great ARM from another year of research for 10s of students working on invasions and climate change. We look forward to next year when the intersection of these two disciplines will be dissected in more detail.
