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Zishan's MSc in the bag

03 November 2017

Spatial frogs tick all the boxes for Zishan's MSc

Zishan Ebrahim's MSc thesis on using spatial data for the conservation of frogs on the Cape peninsula passes all the necessary paperwork. 

It's been great working with Zishan over the past couple of years and we're all really pleased to see his thesis pass the final hurdle. Congratulations Zishan!

  Lab  News

OTS - FFP at Cape of Good Hope

28 October 2017

OTS-FFP back in the Cape of Good Hope Again!

The Organisation for Tropical Studies (OTS) are back in town and we had a fantastic session marking up Xenopus gilli for three days down at the Cape of Good Hope. We last saw them in February - see blog entry here, here and here!

The FFP group was excellent, and very happy to get their hands (and occassionally feet) wet, in order to mark up as many frogs as possible. 

I was really lucky to have the help of PhD student Nitya Mohanty (above) who got stuck into the tagging work. Together with OTS, we had 282 captures of X. gilli as well as 8  X. laevis  which were removed from the reserve. 

By the end of the trip, they were all literally jumping for joy!

Really looking forward to the frog report from: Anson MacKinneyJake VoorheesBlythe Owen, 

  Frogs  News  Xenopus

Talk for SU library on Open Access

24 October 2017

Stellenbosch University Library talk for Open Access week

Today I gave a talk "I put my journal behind a paywall,so why am I talking to you about Open Access? in Stellenbosch University library based on two blogs published earlier this month: A rant for Open Access weekWhy do I like publishing with PeerJ?

It was nice to reflect on my time as editor for a society journal, but I learned a lot about the fantastic work that SU library is doing. Not only do they curate the self archived papers of staff which are then Open Access for all, but they also act as a host for 25 Open Access journals. This is a laudible and totally fantastic role for a university library as paying to host the content of a journal can be costly, especially when it comes to keeping this going in perpetuity.

You can read more about SU library's Open Access initiatives here

Thanks to Sarah D for taking some pics!

  Lab  News

Talk for University of Mauritius

18 October 2017

Nice turnout for talk on invasive frogs at University of Mauritius

I gave a talk to the conservation class of Prof. Vincent Florens at the University of Mauritius, together with other luminaries who pitched. Using amphibians as an example of how to score impacts for invasive species. There were a lot of agreeing nods and understanding here when talking about invasive species. They have so so many and see the impacts daily. 

Watch out for a detailed blog on the Mauritius trip coming soon...

  Lab  meetings  News

Why are we disinterested in animal invasions?

08 September 2017

Why are we disinterested in animal invasions?

Invasives in the Cape Discussion Group is a regular discussion group focussing on invasions that are happening within the fynbos. Hosted at the CIB (and usually led by John R. U. Wilson) the group consists of representatives from SANBI, City of Cape Town, CPUT, UWC, ARC, DAFF, DEA, CapeNature, and the CIB. 

Agreeing to cover for John while he was away, I posed the question: Why are we disinterested in animal invasions? The Cape is replete with animal species which we appear to ignore, or prefer not to think about. Can we define why so many animal invasions are not important to us - or define how and when we would definitely do something? This month's meeting will focus on the current suite of animal invasions in the Cape and ask which we should be doing more about.

Despite having a circulation list of 105 people, we were only 6 for the meeting (from left to right): Nitya Mohanty, Florencia Yannelli, Marike Louw, Phil McLean & Sarah Davies. 

Our numbers spoke volumes about the disinterest in invasive animals. 

Nevertheless, we made a list of Cape invasive animals and the reasons why they were not controlled or eradicated. Note that the list isn't exhaustive but gives some indications about why animals are so hard to tackle. First, control of many species were found to have ethical or economic conflicts (C). Invasions of many species were considered to be to far advanced to be feasible to control (F). Whether or not research was needed before a decision on control/eradication could be made (R). Lastly, many of the species are utilised, potentially causing further conflicts with their control.

  Lab  meetings  News
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