Staff, Students & Associates

Conservation Biology Masters Students (2012/13)

Craig Harding

Email: craig.harding@uct.ac.za

Craig is from Campbellville, Ontario, Canada. He spent much of his early days outdoors, enjoying nature and all it has to offer. This led him to study at the University of Western Ontario (UWO) and graduate with a BSc Honours in Evolution and Ecology and a minor in Geography. While at UWO Craig worked on the foraging behaviours of small mammals in Alberta’s Rocky Mountains as well as the general ecology of bats in Belize. His honours project investigated the possible effects of residual metallic ions from old mining sites on locally endemic yeast species, their insect vectors and the plants they inhabit in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert. After completing his degree, Craig worked in a chemical ecology and entomology lab investigating both the sperm precedence of Army Worm moths Pseudaletia unipuncta, and the basic ecology and reproductive behaviour of two allopatric groups of the cockroach Diploptera punctata. For the past year he has been volunteering and travelling in South Africa, aiding on the Fitztitute’s ‘Hot Birds’ project, sampling Cape Parrots for beak and feather disease in Polokwane, assisting with studies of African Penguin foraging ecology on Robben Island, and assessing winter roosting temperatures of Egyptian Fruit Bats Rousettous aegypticus on Table Mountain. He looks forward to building upon his past experiences through the new opportunities offered at the Fitz.