Jonathan and Sasha graduate

Graduation time is a celebration of years of hard work. Today, it was the turn of Sasha Dines PhD and Jonathan Bell MSc. 

Sasha did her PhD on the use of acoustics to monitor populations of the Indian Ocean humpback dolphin (Sousa plumbea) - allegedly South Africa's most endangered mammal (other mammals may also be threatened). Her PhD worked involved years of deploying microphones into the sea in areas where the dolphins occur, and then trawling through thousands of hours of recordings listening for the occassional whistle or moan. Sasha found that acoustic monitoring might be a superior way of assessing the populations of Indian Ocean humpback dolphin as each individual has it's own signature whistle that can be recognised. 

Jonathan (aka JJ) spent several years looking into the perceptions of members of the public into how they perceived the right for access onto their properties to remove invasive species. Jonathan also looked into the best times in which to remove invasive Guttural Toads from urban properties. It turns out that the toads are most easily captured at night when the lights are on (not as simplistic as you might think!). 

We are very proud of the achievements of both Sasha and Jonathan and congratulate them again on their graduation. It has been  a privalege to have them as members of the MeaseyLab at Stellenbosch University. We look forward to hearing more about their achievements in future.

Dines, S. (2025) Applied passive acoustic monitoring of South Africa's most threatened marine mammal, the Indian Ocean humpback dolphin (Sousa plumbea). Stellenbosch University, PhD thesis

Bell, J.J. (2025) Right time, right place: a mixed method approach for invasive species management. Stellenbosch University, MSc thesis

Adding an important data point on African frogs

Big data syntheses need data, and the majority of scientific data still comes from the nothern hemisphere power houses of USA and Europe with China fast catching up. However, there is still a lot of the rest of the world out there. It is important that studies are made, especially in the southern hemisphere in data poor areas. Today, a new paper on the "Vulnerability of amphibians to global warming" was published in Nature. The article used physiological data from all over the world, but one continent had hardly any data available to the authors.

The African continent is especially data poor:

 

With only 4 data points on it, Africa is a notably large continent with a hardly any data. It is satisfying then that the one data point (shown in Cape Town) comes from the study of Carla Wagener (see here). This study looked at the physiological performance of tadpoles from high and low altitude locations of the African clawed frog, Xenopus laevis.

Obviously, Africa needs more data points, but we are very pleased that we were able to contribute to such an important study.

Literature

Pottier, P., Kearney, M.R., Wu, N.C. et al. Vulnerability of amphibians to global warming. Nature (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08665-0 

Wagener, C., Kruger, N., Measey, J. (2021) Progeny of Xenopus laevis from altitudinal extremes display adaptive physiological performance. J Exp Biol 1 April 2021; 224 (7): jeb233031. doi: https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.233031