Do you remember the workshop back in November 2015? This meeting has now produced a series of publications in Biological Invasions:
Functional responses can unify invasion ecology
Functional responses can’t unify invasion ecology
Fictional responses from Vonesh et al.
Rather than unifying invasion biology, Dick et al.’s approach rests on subjective foundations
It's a great academic back and forth that we really hope you enjoy reading...
There's a multi-step process to becoming a Dr in South Africa. Gio submitted his thesis in mid-November 2016 and it was read by three examiners. Their reports were sent to the dean, but before the paperwork was complete Gio had to defend his thesis before a panel of luminaries. Of course, they were all very impressed. His thesis "Exploring the invasion of the guttural toad Sclerophrys gutturalis in Cape Town through a multidisciplinary approach" was co-supervised by Sarah Davies.
There wasn't much time to celebrate as we all flew off the next day to KZN. However, Gio managed to find time to stop by at the local supermarket to buy ingredients for a traditional dish.
Giovanni Vimercati wrote in September 2013 saying that: "I am strongly interested to study how an invasive species can colonize new territories, interact with ecosystem and adapt to a novel ecological context, especially focusing my attention on reproductive, life history and phenological traits . Moreover, I would like to investigate possible local adaptations and phenotypic plasticity and integrate among them its physiological, behavioural and dispersal constraints through a mechanistic approach. In this way, utilizing environmental and geographical data of South Africa, this analysis may allow to describe the fundamental niche of the species and its potential of invasion." He arrived in Stellenbosch in February 2014 to do exactly this with guttural toads. Only 3 years later, Gio has already submitted his PhD thesis. It's been great having you in the MeaseyLab. We've enjoyed all your enthusiasm, ideas and tutilage in pasta cooking!
Thanks greatly to Ian Durbach who hosted the Workshop on Estimating Animal Abundance and Density using Acoustic Data at Monkey Valley with Res Altwegg, Greg Distiller, Tess Gridley, David Borchers, Stuart Burrell, John Measey, Marike Louw, Ian Durbach & Theoni Photopoulou.
The aim of the workshop was to explore open questions on the use of acoustic data to estimate animal density and abundance. The venue was inspiring, and we hope that there'll be plenty of products that have there bases in this meeting.
Nick is from Malaysia, but joins us from the University of Poitiers in a joint project with Anthony Herrel at the Natural History Museum, Paris (yes, it's a rather complex arrangement).
Nick's project: "Is the radiation of agamid lizards in South-Africa non-adaptive?"
Here's a Q&A session with the British Ecological Society about our recent article in J Appl Ecol.
Sometimes it's hard to answer questions fully, so please do take the time to read the paper here, or read the aSCR pages here.
