Marike wins again

Congratulations (again) to Marike Louw for winning the best student speaker award at Fynbos Forum, 2017! Marike's talk is based on her MSc work on aSCR on the Cape Peninsula Moss Frog, Arthroleptella lightfooti. We're so please that you've decided to make prize winning a habit!

Fynbos forum is held annually at a different venue and brings together managers, practicioners and academics. 

The talk focussed on research being conducted on Arthroleptella lightfooti, the Cape Peninsula Moss frog, using a technique called Acoustic Spatial Capture-Recapture. The technique was explained in detail, from its conceptual basis to its physical application to the Moss frog species. Preliminary results obtained from 2016 were presented and immediate and longterm goals using this technique were outlined. Marike's research will enable us to build a better picture of moss frog density on the Cape peninsula, and how this endemic amphibian is affected by different management practices.

Louw, M. & Measey, J. 2017. Listen up! Eavesdropping on a Cape Peninsula Endemic. Fynbos Forum, Swellendam Showgrounds.  31 July – 3 August 2017.

Shelley publishes on Rose's Mountain Toadlet's amazing reproduction

Few frogs come close to the amazing Rose's Mountain Toadlet. For most of the year they hide away, very rarely sited on their mountain tops. But on moonlit evenings in late August they emerge and go into a frenzy of breeding.

In this really nice paper, Shelley Edwards and co-authors describes what happens after the eggs are laid and the tadpoles quickly grow in their mountain puddle homes. 

This is an amazing natural history paper based on intensive surveys of two populations on the Cape peninsula.

Read all about it:

Edwards, S, Tolley, KA & Measey, GJ (2017) Habitat characteristics influence the breeding of Rose's dwarf mountain toadlet Capensibufo rosei (Anura: Bufonidae) Herpetological Journal27: 287-298. pdf

MeaseyLab welcomes Jennica Poongavanan

At our lab meeting on Thursday we were delighted to welcome Jennica Poongavanan to the extended MeaseyLab students.

Jennica started her MSc with Res Altwegg and Ian Durbach at the University of Cape Town's Department of Statistical Science. Jennica will be part of the SEEC group and will be co-supervised by John at CIB. Jennica's project is to take the density data generated by Marike Louw and the volunteers doing aSCR on the Cape peninsula this year, and turn them into Species Distribution Models. 

British Ecological Society (BES) bulletin covers work of CIB

The work of the Centre for Invasion Biology was covered in the British Ecological Society's bulletin this month. 

This included the fabled win by Marike Louw in South Africa's Young SCience Communicator's Competition for her article on aSCR. See the blog post here and what the BES said about it below:

Nitya presents a poster at Island Invasives Conference

PhD student Nitya Mohanty presents a poster on his work on invasive species of the Andaman Islands at the Island Invasives Conference 2017, Dalhousie Building, University of Dundee, Scotland. Nitya's work was well received with many envious of his idilic island field site in the Bay of Bengal.