Research Interest
I study the costs and benefits of solitary living, through a long-term project on the bush Karoo rat in Namaqualand, South Africa, which is important to understand mammalian social evolution and to contribute to the conservation of the many solitary mammalian species.
Biography
I am a behavioural ecologist interested in social evolution, especially the adaptive value of solitary living in mammals, for which I started a long-term project on the bush Karoo rat. My love for field work stemmed from my work with AfricanBats and the Centre of African Zoonosis at the University of Pretoria where we focussed on population monitoring and aspects of conservation. I then continued with small mammals for my honors in Zoology where I sought to understand the distribution of invasive and indigenous cryptic rodents from southern Africa at the Department of Zoology and Entomology, University of Pretoria. Finally, I did my masters in the same department where I looked at species distribution modelling (SDM) and invasion risk analysis of invasive synanthropic species of Rattus in South Africa. I am now the research manager and board member of the Succulent Karoo Research Station and registered as a PhD student at the University of the Witwatersrand. I study the costs and benefits of solitary living through a long-term project on the bush Karoo rat in the Succulent Karoo biodiversity hotspot. I want to understand mammalian social evolution and to contribute to the conservation of the many solitary mammalian species.
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