| 2009-12-07 | Les Underhill |
| Animal Demography Unit in 2009 | |
At the end of academic year 2009, it is the appropriate time to reflect on progress in the ADU in the year. Between staff, students and our research associates, we published 58 papers and chapters in books. This number is still growing, because some papers with 2009 datelines will only get published in 2010. With Danish funding, partnered with SANBI, we produced a 16-page booklet entitiled Birds and environmental change: building an early warning system in South Africa. Delegates to the Copenhagen climate change conference will each receive a copy of the booklet. Two ADU students, Newi Makhado and Mariette Wheeler, completed PhDs, and will graduate on 14 December 2009. Diane Southey, whose MSc I co-supervised with William Bond in the Department of Botany as lead supervisor and with Guy Midgley at SANBI as yet another co-supervisor, graduated with distinction in June 2009. As we come to the end of the first decade of the 21st century, it is worth reflecting that the numbers of students who have gained PhDs or MScs through ADU supervision (or cosupervision) since 2000 are 13 and 10, respectively (and there is one PhD being examined). Currently there are three postdocs, 12 PhDs and two MScs having ADU supervision or co-supervision. ADU projects continued and made good progress. For example, at the start of 2009, 18 months into SABAP2, 412 atlasers had submitted at least one checklist, 3140 pentads had been visted at least once, the total number of checklists was 10414 and the number of records was 577034. Eleven months later, on 30 November, these values were 645 atlases, 5687 pentads, 26106 checklists and 1411432 records. The rate of accumulation of SABAP2 data exceeds that of SABAP1. The SABAP2 website updates with incoming data every five minutes. Other key projects on the go and making good progress include the butterfly atlas (SABCA), the bird monitoring projects CAR (large terrestrial species, mainly in agricultural landscapes), CWAC (waterbirds) and SAFRING (bird ringing). The reptile atlas (SARCA) is on its final lap. Huge developments were made on the ADU websites. By the end of November, the databases of all projects were consolidated onto one computer at the ADU, and all websites were run through the URL adu.org.za. This enabled the development of the Unified Data Portal (http://udp.adu.org.za) making it possible to gain access simultaneously to ADU data for all projects for a locality or for a species. Thanks to everyone who has contributed to the ADU in 2009: project sponsors, staff, students, colleagues, and especially the citizen scientists who have helped build the ADU&slquo;S "digital biodiversity" database. | |
| 2007-12-20 | Les Underhill |
| From ADU to ADU | |
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. | |
