The coastal town of Betty’s Bay pride itself with the first and only Biosphere in South Africa proclaimed by UNESCO.
Kogelberg Biosphere reserve is a protected terrestrial and coastal environment of international conservation importance. All Biosphere reserves are unique categories of protected areas combining both conservation and sustainable use of natural resources.
Gerhard and the fish and mollusk teams spent the day collecting at the seaside, in tidal pools and in the Palmiet, Rooi Els and Kleinmond River mouths searching with nets and turning over rocks and looking for specimens in kelp and in sea plants. Despite the cold wind and rocky areas all of the researchers were more than pleased with their findings for the day.
Interesting finds and activities
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| Betty's Bay |
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| Betty's Bay |
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| Sea Anemone |
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| Red Bait |
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| Super Klipfish |
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| Nosestripe Klipfish with its eel-like elongated shape |
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| Prof Herman van der Bank inspecting his find of the day |
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| Find of the Day Barbus Andrewi (Witvis) |
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| The fishermen from Cape Town Angling Club who caught the find of the day |
The fish was caught today during an angling competition held in the Brandvlei Dam close to Klipbokkop. It is one of the Yellow fish species and this find is the first example for University of Johannesburg. It will be used to compare it with other members of this family.
This family is problematic since they are closely related and cross breeding is common and threatens this popular sport angling fish. Excellent research results exist for this group and this new addition to the global knowledge of biodiversity will be anxiously awaited.
Prof Erik Holm on fynbos insects and biological control
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| Prof Erik Holm in action |
The fynbos biome is notoriously vulnerable to aggressive plant invaders, and even to animals like deer.
Insect invaders are less successful. Apart from the Argentine ant (a century ago), the scary appearance of hornets recently and even more recently the harlequin ladybird, few foreigners seam to make it here. Maybe this is not so surprising, since the biome is not really insect-friendly. The insect variety and endemism not nearly matches that of plants.
The obvious reasons for this lack of insect diversity, is the winter rainfall regime, which rarely offers the two basic needs of insects simultaneously: high temperature and moisture. Also, being a “fire climax”, the system is poor in accumulations of compost and poor in nitrogen generally.
The insects that occur endemically are however, isolated and specialized relics. There is a rich variety of ants and small shrub-woodborers. (Buprestidae) The mountains provide refuges for isolated populations of rare flightless beetles – stag beetles of the genus Colophon and chafers of the germs Ischnestoma. Also the flower visiting monkey beetles Hoplini and fruit chafers (Cetaoniinae) are represented by a veritable explosion of genera and species.
Most of the exotic insects here are introduced agricultural pests, which luckily stick to their alien agricultural host plants. Some were introduced to control plant invasives, like the successful Cocheniel bug and the Cactoblastis moth on prickly pear, and the dozens of parasites introduced against other invaders like Hakea. Since entomologists are extremely careful in their choices of these releases, there has been no single mishap where these introduced species have switched to endemic host plants.
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| Ischnestoma |
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| Colophon Beetle |
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