Staff, Students & Associates

Doctoral Students

Zingfa Jantur Wala MSc (APLORI) John Day Building: 2.17 Tel:+27 (0)21 650 3300 Fax: +27 (0)21 650 3295 Email: zingfa.wala@uct.ac.za

About Zinga

Zingfa graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Zoology from the University of Jos, Nigeria in 2006. His research focused on the prevalence of gastro-intestinal helminths in public and private school students in Jos. His love for conservation then drove him to the A.P. Leventis Ornithological Research Institute (APLORI), where he obtained an MSc in Conservation Biology in 2009. His MSc project looked at the effects of weather and nectar concentration on the foraging behaviour of four sunbird (Nectariniidae) species in the Amurum Forest Reserve in Jos, Nigeria.

After completing his Masters, Zingfa participated in the tropical ecology and conservation field techniques course organized by the Tropical Biology Association in Kirindy, Madagascar. Since then, through his engagement with APLORI, he has taken part in research projects including a survey on the ecology (population size, breeding biology and migratory movements) of Abdim’s Storks Ciconia abdimii in Nigeria. He and his colleagues also carried out a survey with the title 'Assessment and conservation of Grey-necked Picathartes (Picathartes oreas) in south-east Nigeria' for which they won the Conservation Leadership Programme's Future Conservationist award for 2010.

Zingfa is currently registered as a PhD student at the Fitzpatrick Institute.

Thesis

Effects of climate and land use change (urbanization influences) on plants and their avian pollinators in the fynbos biome of South Africa (Supervisors: Dr Phoebe Barnard and Prof. Phil Hockey).

Recent peer-reviewed publications

2010

Ivande, S. T., Atuo, F. A. & Wala, Z. J. 2010. People, Development and Biodiversity: Finding a balance. Proceedings of 2nd Annual Seminar of Nigeria Tropical Biology Association.

Nickolas M. Waser, Mary V. Price and the TBA Kirindy Pollination Consortium. 2010: A Preliminary Early-season Flower visitation Web for the Kirindy Forest, Madagascar. Journal of Pollination Ecology 1(2), 2010 pp 1-6.