From ADU to ADU
Les Underhill, Director, ADU
Animal Demography Unit, Deparment of Zoology, University of Cape Town
From 1 January 2008, the Avian
Demography Unit (or the ADU for short)
will become the Animal Demography Unit
(still the ADU). What prompted this? Ever
since the ADU initiated the frog atlas project
a decade ago in 1998, there have been
issues with the name Avian Demography
Unit – “Why is the Avian Demography Unit
doing the frog atlas?” This inconsistency
has recently been heightened by our
involvement with projects on reptiles
(Southern African Reptile Conservation
Assessment, effectively the reptile atlas),
and with butterflies (Southern African
Butterfly Conservation Assessment, the
butterfly atlas), and with five postgraduate
students doing PhD and MSc projects on
seals, one on rare mammals in Namibia and
even one on dwarf chameleons.
Although the academic world thrives on
these kinds of delightful contradictions, there
is no need to perpetuate them for ever. We
will thus change our name to be more
representative of what we do. We also
change our host department at the
University of Cape Town, resolving another
anachronism, moving from the Department
of Statistical Sciences to the Department of
Zoology.
Latest news |
| 2009-07-03 | Les Underhill | | SABCA evening, Botanical Gardens, Pietermaritzburg, 17 July 2009 |
SABCA is the Southern African Butterfly Atlas Project.
The Lepidopterists' Society of Africa is hosting a SABCA evening at the Pietermaritzburg Botanical Gardens, starting at 18h30 on 17 July, as part of LepSoc's annual conference and AGM. Silvia Mecenero, SABCA project coordinator, will give an update on SABCA. A butterfly slide show presented by Steve Woodhall, author of the most recent field guide to SA's butterflies, will be included in the evening, featuring photos from the SABCA virtual museum. Moth enthusiast Hermann Staude will talk about moth records received via SABCA. Please come along and join us for this most informative and fun evening! For more info, please visit LepSoc's website. | | |
| | 2009-07-02 | Les Underhill | | First Marine Protected Area in Namibia launched today | The Namibia Islands Marine Protected Area (NIMPA) was launched today. It covers 10 small offshore islands, most of which are important for seabirds. It stretches along 400 km of coastline between Meob Bay in the north and Chamais Bay in the south, with a total area of around one million heactares. There is a lot more information in the
newspaper report.
Three people linked to the Animal Demography Unit have played a role in the creation of NIMPA. Dr Jean-Paul Roux is an ADU Honorary Research Associate, Dr Jessica Kemper is an ADU graduate, whose PhD thesis was on the declining populations of penguins in Namibia, and Dr Katta Ludynia is currently an ADU postdoctoral fellow, whose PhD at the University of Kiel, helped determine the feeding ranges of penguins around the Namibian colonies. | | |
| | 2009-07-01 | Les Underhill | | Press release for one million SABAP2 records | | The
press release relating to the first million SABAP2 records is available.
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Please note that the old ADU web page:
http://www.aviandemographyunit.org
is still available but it is no longer updated.
