Christopher Brooke
– Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Project Title:
Late Pleistocene mammals of the Palaeo-Agulhas plain: The facilitation role of mega-herbivores and the implications for modern rewilding of landscapes
Christopher is an ecologist interested in behavioral ecology of large mammals and what drives the distribution of species in the environment. He is current work focusses on megaherbivores as ecosystem engineers and the roles they play in manipulating and facilitating habitat for other species in the southern Cape. In the cape of South Africa megaherbivores have been absent for much of our recent history, but prior to colonization, occurred throughout much of the landscape and likely facilitated habitat for grazing species throughout the course of history. This work aims to provide a key glimpse into the past using our current understanding of large mammals to predict how historic mammals would have sued the southern Cape and Palaeo-Agulhas Plain environment (a now submerged landscape off the southern Cape). Christopher’s research interests include Paleoecology, ecological modelling, and behavioral ecology.
Rob Davis
– Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Project Title:
Assessing the density, distribution and spatiotemporal dynamics of small carnivores across African conservation landscapes
Rob is a conservation ecologist interested in how anthropogenic and biotic pressures impact carnivore ecology, including spatial and temporal partitioning, habitat use and population density. He completed his BSc at Nottingham Trent University, United Kingdom, in 2011 and spent a year in the Kalahari working for the University of Cambridge on the Kalahari Meerkat Project. Following this, Rob worked for a carnivore research project in Malawi and during this time started his PhD at Nottingham Trent University. Rob’s PhD focused on the status and behavioural ecology of large carnivores in Kasungu National Park, Malawi, and looked at how anthropogenic pressures had impacted the large carnivore guild in the park. Rob is interested in studies applying spatial capture-recapture and occupancy models to camera trap data and is hoping to collaborate on a wide array of projects during his time as a postdoc at Nelson Mandela University.
Lucie Thel
– Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Lucie is a post doc in population ecology interested in phenology of reproduction, behavioral ecology and demography. She studied ecology, agronomy and statistics at Ecole Nationale Supérieure Agronomique de Toulouse from 2015 to 2018, and conducted her PhD at Lyon University in France. She focused on how to measure and describe temporal distribution of births in large herbivores using citizen scientists’ annotations of camera traps data from Snapshot Serengeti program. She also studied the effect of season of birth on survival in a zebra population living in Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe using capture-mark-recapture. She worked as a temporary teaching and research assistant at Toulouse University, giving statistics and ecology courses, and she is now starting a post doc at Wildlife Ecology Lab to work on camera traps data and lion behavior.
Wildlife Ecology Lab 