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 Dr Allen Ellis is an evolutionary ecologist interested in the myriad of factors generating and maintaining the remarkable floristic diversity which characterizes the Greater Cape area. His current research focuses on the degree of specialization of interactions between plants and insects, both pollinators and herbivores, and how this influences floristic diversity. Much of his work is centered on the spring mass flowering displays of Namaqualand. His interest in the interface between ecology and evolution started as an undergraduate student at UCT and was further developed as a PhD student in the University of California system and then as a postdoctoral fellow at UKZN. He currently is a senior lecturer at Stellenbosch University, where he runs research programmes focused on diverse aspects of floral evolution, the links between plant and insect diversity in the Fynbos, non-Darwinian (epigenetic) evolutionary mechanisms and dispersal evolution under global change.
Abstract: The standard explanation for the radical diversity of floral form encountered in the Angiosperms is that different flower types cater for different pollinators with different requirements and sensory modalities. This pollinator shift model for floral/angiosperm diversification is appealing because specializing on particular pollinator species can directly result in reproductive isolation between plant species, thus generating diversity. However the use of different pollinators often only results in weak isolation between plant species, and often plant species display substantial floral variation despite using the same pollinating vectors. In this talk I explore mechanisms of floral diversification beyond the dominant pollinator-shift paradigm, drawing on examples from the remarkable floral diversity which characterizes South Africa’s arid zones.
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 Quinton Martins (BSc Zoology (UCT), PhD) is the co-founder and Project Manager of the Cape Leopard Trust. He has worked in wilderness areas throughout Africa since 1993. His work has ranged from guiding and managing safari camps in Botswana and Southern Africa to working in Central Africa. During this time Quinton was fortunate enough to track, observe, photograph and work with all sorts of terrestrial carnivores and it is here that his passion for these elusive creatures was born.
He completed his PhD through the University of Bristol, U.K., has been researching leopards in the Cederberg mountains since 2003 and has an interest in the role of predators in the ecosystem and why removing them is a bad idea.
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A/Prof Justin O'Riain has worked on a variety of species that thrive in
arid environments, including the below ground specialists (naked
mole-rats) and above ground celebrities (meerkats). While revealing the
remarkable adaptations of these species to life in an ecologically harsh
environment he published in Nature, Science and PNAS and established
himself as behavioural ecologist of international repute. More recently
he has been applying his behavioural ecology skills to the applied
challenges posed by human-wildlife conflict. This has seen him
establish the Baboon Research Unit at UCT with the objective of
providing data essential to the management and conservation of a baboon
population forced into coexistence with humans. In addition he has
Dr Scholes is a systems ecologist with 30 years of experience in African dryland ecosystems, and two hundred publications on the topics of savanna ecology and climate change. He was one of the leaders of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), which brought the idea of ecosystem services into common currency, and member of the writing team of the MA Desertification synthesis report, which applied the idea of ecosystem services to the issue of degradation in drylands. He has a long involvement in earth observation, including a period as chair of the Global Terrestrial Observing System, membership of the Implementation Plan Task Team of the Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS), and technical guidance to the South African Environmental Observing Network. He is a former member of the Board of South African National Parks, and a current member of the Board of the South African National Space Agency. He chairs the Group on Earth Observation Biodiversity Observation Network.
