Project description
Endangered pygmy bluetongue lizards only live in the Mid-north of SA. The species is potentially affected by climate change with populations of this short-range endemic in the north likely to go extinct within the next 50 years. In order to be ready to move animals from these more northerly habitats we need to know where and how to move them to. One other major consideration is their unusual life history – they live in abandoned spider holes. As part of the potential move of animals to more southerly locations we might have to also move spiders, but we currently don’t know the number of species and their distributions. The project involves students collating records from DEW and sequencing a barcoding gene to determine the number of species and their distributions.
Co-supervisors
This project is co-supervised by Bruno Buzatto (Lecture in Biodiversity and Conservation).
Industry involvement
Department of Environment and Water
Note: You need to register interest in projects from different supervisors (not a number of projects with the one supervisor).
You must also contact each supervisor directly to discuss both the project details and your suitability to undertake the project.