| hosts, seasonality and geographic distribution of the south african tortoise tick, amblyomma marmoreum. | the tortoise tick amblyomma marmoreum was collected from large numbers of reptiles and other animals during the course of numerous surveys conducted in south africa. a total of 1229 ticks, of which 550 were adults, were recovered from 309 reptiles belonging to 13 species, with leopard tortoises, geochelone pardalis being the most heavily infested. the 269 birds sampled harboured 4901 larvae, 217 nymphs and no adult ticks, and the prevalence of infestation was greatest on helmeted guineafowls, nu ... | 2006 | 16715875 |
| who bites the bullet first? the susceptibility of leopards panthera pardus to trophy hunting. | reliable data is fundamentally important for managing large carnivore populations, and vital for informing hunting quota levels if those populations are subject to trophy hunting. camera-trapping and spoor counts can provide reliable population estimates for many carnivores, but governments typically lack the resources to implement such surveys over the spatial scales required to inform robust quota setting. it may therefore be prudent to shift focus away from estimating population size and inst ... | 2015 | 25860139 |
| creating larger and better connected protected areas enhances the persistence of big game species in the maputaland-pondoland-albany biodiversity hotspot. | the ideal conservation planning approach would enable decision-makers to use population viability analysis to assess the effects of management strategies and threats on all species at the landscape level. however, the lack of high-quality data derived from long-term studies, and uncertainty in model parameters and/or structure, often limit the use of population models to only a few species of conservation concern. we used spatially explicit metapopulation models in conjunction with multi-criteri ... | 2013 | 23977144 |
| parasites of domestic and wild animals in south africa. li. ticks infesting leopard tortoises <i>stigmochelys pardalis</i>, hingeback tortoises <i>kinixys zombensis</i> and angulate tortoises <i>chersina angulata</i>. | the objective of the study was to record the tick species collected from three species of tortoise, each in a different province of south africa. ticks were collected from leopard tortoises, stigmochyles pardalis, in the southern region of the kruger national park, mpumalanga province; from hingeback tortoises, kinixys zombensis, in the enseleni nature reserve, kwazulu-natal province and from angulate tortoises, chersina angulata, in the west coast national park, western cape province. of the 63 ... | 2017 | 28281776 |
| structural habitat predicts functional dispersal habitat of a large carnivore: how leopards change spots. | natal dispersal promotes inter-population linkage, and is key to spatial distribution of populations. degradation of suitable landscape structures beyond the specific threshold of an individual's ability to disperse can therefore lead to disruption of functional landscape connectivity and impact metapopulation function. because it ignores behavioral responses of individuals, structural connectivity is easier to assess than functional connectivity and is often used as a surrogate for landscape co ... | 2015 | 26591456 |