I came to South Africa to study how the ecological interactions between plants and pollinators affect their evolution. My research questions are not tightly linked to specific species, but they aim at assessing the generality of certain eco-evolutionary patterns. To this goal, I am focusing on a heterogeneous group of plants distributed all across South Africa, characterized by long-tubed flowers that are visited by insects with adequately long tongues and proboscis. Continue reading
Searching for dragons
My first taste of the Drakensberg, the Dragon Mountains. A long weekend of snow and sunshine, hiking between towers of rock, sleeping in caves, bouldering and climbing on sketchy sandstone (“Jack and the Beanstalk”, 5 pitches, 17/5b).
Some pictures.
Impressions of South Africa
Cumberland natural reserve.
I flew to South Africa on May 6th, 2016. This is my second time in the country. The first time was back in 2014, for a short visit in the area around Cape Town and Stellenbosch. I came for a conference and I stayed a few more days, for a walk in the Fynbos, some wine tasting, a cage-dive with white sharks, a hike up Table Mountain. This time I am in Pietermaritzburg, and I will stick around for a while longer: I got a research position for three years. Continue reading
Plant-Pollinator Porn
Here is a selection of pictures by Christian Ziegler, naturalist and photojournalist for National Geographic. They depict animal-flower interactions in general, not only pollination events. And porn is in the eyes of the viewer, as well as in the eye of the maker. But Plant-Pollinator Porn makes a better acronym, so I’ll stick to that.