Gobabeb Research & Training Centre

One of Gobabeb’s young researchers, Miya Kabajani, attended the Arid zone Ecology Forum conference in Worcester, South Africa. About a hundred delegates listened to presentations ranging from vegetation studies to climate change. Miya presented her project investigating the habitat selection of the endemic Husab sand Lizard and received the first prize for the best poster presentation by a student or young scientist.....

We bid farewell to our Training assistant intern Sirkka Tshiningayamwe who was at Gobabeb for the past three months. Thank you for your hard work and contribution to all the activities around Gobabeb. We wish you all the best and you will be missed.

One of several highlights of the year-long 50th Anniversary celebration programme for Gobabeb recently came to a close. This was the Colloquium of the Royal Society of South Africa held at Gobabeb over April 30th and May 1st. The programme addressed the theme 'Desert Research: Past and Future'. The programme took a very wide view of 'desert research' and included papers from the Antarctic, Mars and other exotic places. Over 21 people gave presentations ranging from the 'history and future of Gobabeb', to 'climate change physiology', to papers on giraffe, rhinos, oryx and kangaroos, to 'cryptic hypolithic soil communities', to 'restoration, research and monitoring the central Namib uranium rush', to 'meteorology and the role of satellites'.

Hunting for Robber Flies and Mydas Flies at Gobabeb, researcher Torsten Dikow of the Field Museum of Chicago shares his experiences at Gobabeb collecting specimens from two fascinating families of flies. Robber flies (Asilidae) are a diverse family of true flies (Diptera) with some 7,500 described species from around the world. Asilids are predatory flies that feed on other insects, which they catch primarily in flight.