Christophe Baltzinger is a Forest Engineer with the French National Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE). His main research interests are in plant-animal interactions, investigating the role wild ungulates play in shaping plant communities and in ecosystem functioning.
While visiting the C·I·B, Christophe will collaborate with C·I·B Core Team members Prof Colleen Downs, Dr Llewellyn Foxcroft and Prof Cang Hui, looking at the dispersal of exotic and native plants by native and exotic ungulates in Southern Africa. Three scientific publications are planned and associated to this fellowship, which will be dealing with the experimental assessment of gut passage time of exotic plants by indigenous ungulates and the other linked to the identification in situ of potential ungulate vectors of exotic plants through endozoochory and/or epizoochory using camera traps in different monitoring sites. Another output of the fellowship is a workshop for parks, wildlife reserves and large herbivore scientists in Southern Africa. Christophe will further give three different lectures related to seed dispersal by large ungulates.
