List of Titles

Bat species richness and community composition along a mega-transect in the Okavango river basin:

- Weier, Sina M, Keith, Mark, Neef, Götz G, Parker, Daniel M, Taylor, Peter

Authors: Weier, Sina M , Keith, Mark , Neef, Götz G , Parker, Daniel M , Taylor, Peter
Date: 2020
Language: English
Type: text , article
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/149264 , vital:38820 , https://doi.org/10.3390/d12050188
Description: The Okavango River Basin is a hotspot of bat diversity that requires urgent and adequate protection. To advise future conservation strategies, we investigated the relative importance of a range of potential environmental drivers of bat species richness and functional community composition in the Okavango River Basin. During annual canoe transects along the major rivers, originating in the central Angolan highlands, we recorded more than 25,000 bat echolocation calls from 2015 to 2018. We corrected for possible biases in sampling design and effort.
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Date Issued: 2020

Cultivation of medicinal plants as a tool for biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation in the Amatola region, South Africa:

- Wiersum, K Freerk, Dold, Anthony P, Husselman, Madeleen, Cocks, Michelle L

Authors: Wiersum, K Freerk , Dold, Anthony P , Husselman, Madeleen , Cocks, Michelle L
Date: 2010
Language: English
Type: text , book
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141489 , vital:37979 , ISBN 9781402054488 , https://library.wur.nl/ojs/index.php/frontis/issue/view/232
Description: This paper describes the assumptions and results of a study to assess whether cultivation of medicinal plants can serve as a tool for combined biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation. The study was carried out in the Amatola region of Eastern Cape, South Africa, where sustained beliefs in medicinal plant use, also under non-traditional conditions, has resulted in an increase in commercial demands. It was based on the assumption of poverty alleviation not only referring to an increase in income and labour, but also an increase in social capital and human dignity. The study assessed the local perceptions of the use and cultivation of medicinal plants and the need for conservation of these plants, as well as the features of already ongoing cultivation practices and options for increased cultivation. It consisted of participatory assessments in three villages involving around 250 persons and participatory trials with 14 rural women selling medicinal plants on urban markets. The study indicated that the growing demand for medicinal plants is related to the great cultural significance attached to medicinal plants.
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Date Issued: 2010

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The early reception of Hill of Fools

- Wright, Laurence

Authors: Wright, Laurence
Date: 2004
Language: English
Type: text , article
Identifier: vital:7040 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007379 , http://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC47864
Description: preprint , The early reception of Peteni’s novel is interesting because it illustrates the mind-sets and critical assumptions of those who first mediated the novel to different readerships. The book initially caused little stir either in South Africa or abroad, and it has made its way quietly in later years in no small part due to support from set-work prescription committees, and its translation into other media, radio and television. A one-off novel by an unknown writer is unlikely to gather critical momentum in international discussion, and the book has been more often noticed in academic studies focused on the Xhosa novel, some of which barely register that the work was first written in English. However, today it is certainly among the novels most widely-read by ordinary South Africans, not only those from the Eastern Cape, but for among many throughout the country who encountered it at school.
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Date Issued: 2004

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'Iron on iron': modernism engaging apartheid in some South African railway poems

- Wright, Laurence

Authors: Wright, Laurence
Date: 2011
Language: English
Type: text , article
Identifier: vital:7068 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007459 , https://doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2011.626177
Description: preprint , Modernism tends to be criticised, internationally, as politically conservative. The objection is often valid, although the charge says little about the quality of artistic achievement involved. This article argues that the alliance between Modernism and political conservatism is by no means a necessary one, and that there are instances where modernist vision has been used to convey substantive political insight, effective social critique and solid resistance. To illustrate the contrast,the article juxtaposes the abstract Modernism associated with Ben Nicholson and World War 2, with a neglected strain of South African railway poetry which uses modernist techniques to effect a powerful critique of South Africa’s apartheid dispensation. The article sustains a distinction between universalising modernist art that requires ethical work from its audiences to achieve artistic completion, and art in which modernist vision performs the requisite ethical work within its own formal constraints. Four very different South African railway poems, by Dennis Brutus, John Hendrickse, Alan Paton, and Leonard Koza, are examined and contextualised to demonstrate ways in which a modernist vision has been used to portray the social disruptions caused by apartheid. Modernist techniques are used to turn railway experience into a metonym for massive social disruption,without betraying the social reality of the transport technology involved.
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Date Issued: 2011

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Ecological niche modeling of the invasive potential of Nile tilapia Oreochromis niloticus in African river systems: concerns and implications for the conservation of indigenous congenerics

- Zengeya, Tsungai A, Robertson, Mark P, Booth, Anthony J, Chimimba, Christian T

Authors: Zengeya, Tsungai A , Robertson, Mark P , Booth, Anthony J , Chimimba, Christian T
Date: 2013
Language: English
Type: text , article
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/124341 , vital:35596 , https://doi.10.1007/s10530-012-0386-7
Description: This study applied ecological niche models to determine the potential invasive range of Nile tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus, with a particular focus on river systems in southern Africa where it is now established and spreading. Computational tools such as niche models are useful in predicting the potential range of invasive species, but there are limitations to their application. In particular, models trained on native records may fail to predict the full extent of an invasion. This failure is often attributed to changes in either the niche of the invading species or the variables used to develop the models. In this study, we therefore evaluated the differences in the predictive power of models trained with different environmental variables, the effect of species range (native vs. introduced) on model performance and assessed whether or not there is evidence suggestive of a niche shift in Nile tilapia following its introduction. Niche models were constructed using Maxent and the degree of niche similarity was assessed using Schoener‘s index. Null models were used to test for significance. Model performance and niche conservatism varied significantly with variable selection and species range. This indicates that the environmental conditions available to Nile tilapia in its native and introduced ranges are not congruent. Nile tilapia exhibited broad invasive potential over most of southern Africa that overlaps the natural range of endemic congenerics. Of particular concern are areas which are free of exotic species but are now vulnerable due to the promotion of fish introductions mainly for aquaculture and sport fishing.
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Date Issued: 2013

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