LAB NEWS!!
- April 2020: Karla Alujevic received her PhD degree in virtual space ;); congratulations Dr Alujevic!- Sept 2019: Pauline Dufour (from HKU) is back for the third and last field season of her PhD, looking at the thermal biology of nocturnal and diurnal lizards. Welcome back!
- August 2019: Raquel and I headed to Species On The Move meeting in Kruger National Park. Great meeting overall, see summary of highlights here
- August 2019: Check out our recent paper with Dr Sam Fey as lead author in Global Change Biology. For a snippet, see here.
Prior:
- July 2019: Karla Alujevic attended the ZSSA conference in Kruger NP and presented part of her PhD research on covariation of individual traits in an agamid lizard.
- June 2019: we just published a review in Proc. B that summarizes studies that investigate the thermal effects of alien plants on ectotherms. It is time to use more operative temperatures in studies of impacts of alien plant invasions! read nugget here ;)
- Feb - Sept 2019: I am off on sabbatical in France, in the beautiful town of Tours, and hosted by Sylvain Pincebourde and his fantastic equipe and lab at IRBI. Fun fun fun!
- February 2019: our paper on vulnerability indices is out in the journal Ecography! We show that the spatial and temporal scale of operative temperature sampling can bias these indices.
- February 2019: the lizard's colour variation field season has started again, Federico, Jonathan and 2 more assistants are off to the field, all the way to Limpopo!
- January 2019: Happy start of the year! Lizard field work in the Kalahari with Don Miles, Ray Huey, Barry Sinervo, Antony Gilbert and Seb Kirchhof as part of a National Geographic grant.
- Dec 2018: Jeff and I attended the African Bioacoustics Community conference at UCT, Cape Town. Great fun and info!
- May 2018: congrats to Karla Alujevic who's just received a Systematics Research Fund grant to work with Jeff Streicher at the NH Museum in London ;)
- May 2018: we just had a great HFSP project workshop on seabird navigation and the potential use of infrasound. Check updates here.
- April 2018: Raquel Garcia is the winner of the 2018 Diversity travel award!Yay!
- April 2018: Field season for thermal properties of colour projects in lizards and sunbirds has started! Jonathan Goldenberg, Federico Massetti and Svana Rogalla are off to the field!
- February 2018:Pauline Dufour visited us for 10 days from the Bonebrake lab, University of Hong Kong. We had fun gecko stuff brainstorming!
- January 2018: Happy new year! We just had our first seabird acoustics and navigation meeting in Stellenbosch, check here
- Nov 2017: Congrats to Dianah Kutama who won the best MSc presentation prize at the CIB annual research meeting, nice way to end the year!
- Nov 2017: Raquel Garcia received a prestigious Claude Leon Foundation fellowship to continue her research on the interactive effects of plant invasions and climate change on the small tortoise Homopus areolatus. Thumbs up!
- Sept 2017: Our online popular article in "The Conversation" is out, read here!
- August 2017: Susana attended the 9th International Symposium of Integrative Zoology in Xining, China. Our symposium on biological buffers and the impacts of climate change was a great success!
- August 2017: New PhD student Federico Massetti has arrived to work on the mechanisms and the evolution of thermal colour in south African lizards. A big welcome to our group!
- July 2017: PhD students Ingrid Minnaar and Karla Alujevic gave great talks at the ZSSA-ESSA meeting in Pretoria
- May-June 2017: we had a series of visitors in the lab and enjoyed great talks and discussions from Matthew Shawkey and Tim Bonebrake
- April 2017: lab member Ingrid Minnar has just received the 'first place' award for the popular article category of the SAASTA Young Science Communicators Competition; nicely done Ingrid!
- March 2017: we have been awarded a highly competitive HFSP grant to investigate the possibility that seabirds use infrasound to navigate the vast ocean. This is an international team effort with members in the UK, USA and The Netherlands. We are all very excited to get started on some 'new frontiers' seabird research! See available postdoc position related to this project (look under the 'Prospective lab members' sub-heading below)!
- January 2017: we have received an NRF South Africa/Flanders Joint Scientific bilateral grant to study the thermal properties of colour integument in birds and lizards. This is a very exciting project in collaboration with Prof Matthew Shawkey
- December 2016: Casey Broom received his MSc degree with distinction, we are very proud and sad to see him leave! Mike Logan is moving on to Losos lab at Harvard and tropical lizard research in Panama, we wish him lots of fun in the field!
- December 2016: Prof Marshall McCue is visiting the lab and has come to train some of us on some cool and fancy stable isotope techniques :-) (we are psyched!)
- October 2016: Raquel Garcia has been awarded a L'Oréal-UNESCO Regional Fellowships For Women in Science. She inspires all of us! See link here
September 2016: Melissa Plasman and Victor Reynoso are joining the lab as 1 year postdoc and research visitor, respectively. Welcome to the CLime lab!
- May 2016: We have launched a citizen science project to increase the public's awareness of the invasive harlequin ladybird Harmonia axyridis in South Africa and to improve our knowledge of its distribution and spread. Read more about the project here!
- March 2016: We are welcoming Karla Alujevic, a new PhD student in the lab. Watch the space about her research below (but she will be working on the coolest (no pun intended) blue head lizards you can find in South Africa!)
- Dec 2015: The lab has been awarded an NRF competitive grant for 2016-2018, good going! For more information on fellowships, see NEW OPPORTUNITIES under 'Prospective students' below.
- Dec 2015: Congrats to Jessica Allen for receiving her PhD, well done Dr Allen!
- Oct 2015: Welcome to Raquel Garcia who's joining the lab for a postdoc!
- Oct 2015: Zuzana Starostova is visiting the lab for a couple of months and collaborating on a project relating to individual variation in metabolicrate, water loss rate and coloration in lady beetles.
- May 2015: Check our popular article on some of the current lady beetle work in the lab here
- Dec 2015: Both Becky and Elsje received distinctions for their MSc theses, well done!
- Oct 2014: Mike Logan has joined our lab for a postdoc, welcome and we look forward to a great collaboration!
- Sept 2014: Michael Angilletta visited the lab for a week, it was great to host him in Stellenbosch and talk about baboon thermoregulation :-)
- April 2014: Nozi Mbongwa has joined our lab as an NRF intern, we welcome her to the group!
- April 2014: Casey Broom has received a Harry Crossley bursary for his MSc, way to go!
- March 2014: Jessica Allen got her 2nd PhD paper accepted in BioControl, time for cake!
- Announcing CIB Workshop: Drivers, mechanisms and impacts of insect invasions, November 24-25, 2014, Stellenbosch. Check the webpage!
- Jan 2014: Ray Huey and Donald Miles visited the lab on their way to the Kalahari, great honour to host them in the CLIME lab :-)
- Dec 2013: Helene Basson received a distinction for her MSc thesis, well done Helene!
- Nov 2013: Becky Shinner won the best MSc oral presentation with 20,000R prize award at the CIB Annual Research Meeting, congratulations!