Gideon Jacobus de Jager

I am a conservation geneticist working on African mammals, primarily bovids. I obtained my PhD in 2018 at the University of Pretoria, wherein I conducted population genetics and genomics analyses of Cape buffalo populations in southern Africa in state-protected areas and on private ranches, with management recommendations as one of the key outcomes of my PhD. I am currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pretoria, where I have continued to study Cape buffalo, but have also branched out to population genetics studies of common eland, greater kudu and several other bovid and mammalian species. I am also a core team member of a project where we are developing genetic management guidelines for large vertebrates in southern Africa, in collaboration with various conservation practitioners and scientists throughout the region. However, more relevant to SAHRIS, I will soon start a Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions (MSCA) Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Copenhagen, with Assoc. Prof. Eline Lorenzen as my host. I will be using the ancient DNA clean labs at the University of Copenhagen to extract and sequence the DNA of South African (SA) bovids from a time-series of subfossils collected at various archeological and palaeontological sites in SA. These genetic data will be used to answer questions about how different bovid species responded to past changes in climate, habitat availability and human activities (with special focus on the now-submerged Palaeo-Agulhas Plain off the southern coast of SA) by directly evaluating changes in genetic diversity over time and correlating this with various environmental and human-related periods/events. This will provide valuable information about the natural biological (genetic) heritage of SA (what we have lost compared to what we still have, in terms of bovid genetic diversity) and how we might best protect and conserve the extant bovid species and populations in the face of current climate change.