Francois Becker is a keen Southern African herpetologist and conservation scientist. He is currently a researcher at Gobabeb Research and Training Centre in the Namib desert, where he is working on barking geckos (genus Ptenopus), and investigating the use of their calls in mating and its implications for their evolution. He is also involved in several taxonomic projects on thread snakes and reed frogs, and on the conservation ecology of the Critically Endangered Rose’s mountain toadlet, on which he did his MSc in ecological statistics, through the University of Cape Town and South African National Biodiversity Institute. He is also involved in the South African Frog Re-assessment Group (SAFRoG), which re-assesses all Southern African amphibians for the IUCN Red List, and in the Namibian Atlas project, which aims to gain a deeper understanding of the spread of biodiversity throughout Namibia. More of Francois’ work can be found on Research Gate.
Robert Hopkins, a researcher at the Zimbabwe Museum of Natural History, had been wanting to find the mysterious Cave Squeaker (or Chimanimani Squeaker) in the Chimanimani highlands of eastern Zimbabwe, for a very long time. […]
