News and highlights

Read more about the article Prioritising areas for invasive alien plant management in an urban setting
The figure shows overall priority areas for the management of invasive alien plants across the City of Cape Town, South Africa.
2018 / Highlighted papers

Prioritising areas for invasive alien plant management in an urban setting

Factors related to human safety and security are most important when prioritising areas for invasive alien plant (IAP) management across the Cape Town metro.

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4 September 2018
Read more about the article Clearing Acacias for Mandela Day
Residents of Camphill Village West Coast clearing invasive Acacia stands which were then turned into wood chips and firewood. (Photo credit: Sophia Turner)
2018 / News

Clearing Acacias for Mandela Day

In celebration of Mandela Day on July 18th, staff members of DST-NRF Centre for Invasion Biology (C·I·B) joined a group of 150 volunteers who gave their time to help with projects at Camphill Village West Coast. 

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28 August 2018
Read more about the article Sleeping with the enemy: freshwater invaders hybridising in South African waters
Schematic illustrating the hybridization between smallmouth and largemouth bass in the invaded Olifants River system. Viable F1 hybrids are produced when smallmouth bass provide the sperm and largemouth bass provide the eggs. These F1 hybrids, in turn, can mate, with either parental species, resulting in a backcross – a hybrid that morphologically (size, shape, and structure of an organism or one of its parts) looks like the parent species, but who’s DNA has “pieces” of the other species incorporated. Alternatively, two F1 hybrids could reproduce, resulting in F2 hybrids.
2018 / News

Sleeping with the enemy: freshwater invaders hybridising in South African waters

A recent study published in the Journal of Fish Biology showed that not only is introgressive hybridisation between two notorious freshwater fish invaders possible, but continues to occur within an invaded South African river system.

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21 August 2018
Read more about the article Natural vegetation increases macadamia pest control by bats
Sina Weier looking at a small Vespertilionidae, also commonly known as “evening bats” or “vesper bats”, on an Angola expedition. (Photo credit: Kostadin Luchansky)
2018 / News

Natural vegetation increases macadamia pest control by bats

As recently published in the journal Biological Conservation, natural vegetation is the most important factor increasing the activity of insect-eating bat species on macadamia orchards.

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17 August 2018
Read more about the article The dominance-diversity relationship in ants
Plot showing the relationship between species richness and the abundance of dominant ants. The red line shows the decline in local species richness when invasive dominants are present, the orange line shows the pattern when only native dominants are present.
2018 / News

The dominance-diversity relationship in ants

A recent study by a team of international researchers, including former C·I·B post-doctoral associate, Tom Bishop, has shown that invasive dominant ant species have different effects on the diversity of the wider ant community than native dominant species.

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7 August 2018