MSc University of Cape Town, 1998
BSc (Hons.) University of Cape Town, 1996
BSc University of Cape Town, 1995

Awards for the year 2001:

University of Cape Town Prestigious Research Scholarship
Skye Foundation Prestigious Scholarship
Danish Academy of Sciences Collaboration Scholarship
National Science Foundation (South Africa) PhD Research Scholarship
Marcia Brady Tucker Travel Award from the American Ornithological Union

Research Interests:

Combining diverse datasets from the fields of molecular biology, ecology, morphology and biogeography to better understand evolutionary processes operating at the species-population interface.

Current Research:

Birds, molecules, and evolutionary patterns among Africa’s islands in the sky
Two undeniable features can be attributed to tropical habitats: their high biodiversity and, the dramatic threat that human activities pose to this biodiversity. The richly forested montane habitats of Africa are scattered along a 5000km mountain chain running from the Ethiopian Plateau in the north to the coastal areas of South Africa. To the west are isolated mountain chains in Angola and Cameroon. While some of these montane habitats are within visual distance of each other, others are separated by hundreds of kilometres. Yet, in nearly all cases, the intervening vegetation appears to form an effective barrier to dispersal for species confined to breeding within these high altitude environments. The montane habitats of Africa can thus be considered as ecological islands, providing a fascinating system for testing many aspects of ecological theory.

My research has largely focused on the colourful and charismatic sunbirds, most of which belong to the largest avian genus Nectarinia. The sunbirds are a particularly interesting group with which to model biogeographic patterns because of their high species richness and endemism, and ecologically, for the important role that they play in plant pollination. In spite of their importance there is a paucity of information on the distribution of, and relationships within this group. Various authorities have divided taxa in different ways and one key objective is to resolve their taxonomy and thereby define the conservation status of these species. In addition to the systematics research above, I am investigating intraspecific variation and species boundaries in two groups of African sunbirds, olive-thrushes, crimson-wings and African robins. The molecular data is being combined with, distributional, morphological and ecological datasets to investigate evolutionary processes around the montane circle of Africa.

Comparative phylogeography of southern African gastropods
Marine conservation, paralleling terrestrial analogues, has seen a recent shift away from single species orientated conservation approaches towards ecosystem conservation strategies. The design of appropriate conservation strategies in the marine environment is particularly difficult. Firstly, the coastal zone is hard to delimit and is best thought of as an open system. At the same time the need for effective reserve design is mounting, as human impacts continue to dramatically affect coastal environments.

In an extensive review of the distribution of marine invertebrates around the coastline of southern Africa, four distinct marine biogeographic provinces were delimited. Similar, although not completely concordant results were obtained in a distributional analyses of fish. While these approaches can be highly informative they only consider current species distributions and largely ignore history. Molecular biology provides a powerful tool with which to overcome this limitation.

Traditionally, alloenzymes or protein markers have been used to investigate population structure in marine species. The results have tended to be conservative in their estimate of structure, likely due to the limited variability inherent in these markers. This is dramatically illustrated in the abalone, Haliotis midae; alloenzymes revealed extremely limited population structure, in contrast mitochondrial DNA revealed a sharp divide at Cape Agulhas - a discovery, with considerable importance to fisheries managers. The disparity between alloenzymes and mtDNA razes the question of whether other previous alloenzyme studies in marine taxa have underestimated population structure and what are the importance of these finding to the regional structuring of southern African marine fauna. Additional marine gastropods with different life history strategies are currently being collected to in the future allow for a comparative phylogeographic study to be undertaken and to investigate how population structure relates to life history and therefore if life history can be used as a predictive tool for marine reserve design.

Publications:

Bowie R. C. K., N. A. Sweijd, E. H. Harley & P. A. Cook. (In review). Patterns of gene flow and population genetic structure in the South African abalone Haliotis midae (Molecular Ecology).

Bowie R. C. K. & J. S. Donaldson. (In review). Linking behavioural ecology to landscape ecology and the implications for improving reserve design in fragmented ecosystems: butterflies in Renosterveld as a model. (Journal of Applied Ecology)

Bowie R. C. K. & A. Frank. (In Press). Highveld Grassland. In Damico J. et al. (eds) The Ecoregions of Africa. World Wildlife Fund, USA.

Bowie R. C. K. & A. Frank. (In Press). Drakensberg montane grassland, woodland & forest. In Damico J. et al. (eds) The Ecoregions of Africa. World Wildlife Fund, USA.

Bowie R. C. K. & A. Frank. (In Press). Drakensberg altimontane grassland and woodland. In Damico J. et al. (eds) The Ecoregions of Africa. World Wildlife Fund, USA.

Sweijd N. A., R. C. K. Bowie, B. Evans & A. Lopata. (In Press). The application of biochemical and molecular genetic species identification techniques to the management and conservation of marine organisms. In Solé-Cava A., C. A. M. Russo & J. P. Thorpe. Marine Genetics. Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Sweijd N. A., R. C. K. Bowie, B. Evans & A. Lopata. 2000. Molecular genetics and the management and conservation of marine organisms. Hydrobiologia. 420: 153-164.

Bowie R. C. K, D. S. Jacobs & P. Taylor. 1999. Resource utilization by two morphologically similar insectivorous bats (Nycteris thebaica and Hipposideros caffer). South African Journal of Zoology. 34: 27-33.

Lloyd P., C. Bosque, R. C. K. Bowie, R. Covas, M. A. du Plessis, Huyser, S. J. Milton & R. Wanless. 1999. Flying high: orienteering current directions in avian research. South African Journal of Science. 95: 50-54.

Sweijd N. A., R. C. K. Bowie, A.L. Lopata, A. M. Marinaki, E. H. Harley & P. A. Cook. 1998. A PCR technique for forensic species level identification of abalone tissue. Journal of Shellfish Research. 17: 889-895.

Milton S. J., J. H. Hoffman, R. C. K. Bowie, et al. 1998. Invasive Fountain Grass on the Cape Peninsula. South African Journal of Science. 94: 1-2.

Popular Science Articles
Bowie R. C. K. 2000. Africa’s jewels: the sunbirds. Africa Birds and Birding. 5: 18

Bowie R. C. K. & P. A. R. Hockey. 1999. Waters of death: the causes and consequences of red tides. African Environment and Wildlife. 7: 44-48.

Current Position:

http://ib.berkeley.edu/people/faculty/person_detail.php?person=282