The Holocene archaeology of the South African west coast is arguably the most studied among other coastal stretches in this country. It has helped to understand the shifts in the lifeways and technology of coastal hunter-gatherers in relation to their environment, climate changes and cultural contact with herder groups. Among the momentous and varied records, the appearance of very large shell middens known as ‘megamiddens’ stands out. They are discontinuously distributed along a ~125 km long stretch of coastline from Lamberts Bay and Elands Bay to Paternoster, and date to ca. 3200-2200 cal. BP. Megamiddens around Paternoster are less studied than the two former. The Fisheries Factory Midden in Paternoster is contemporary with two megamiddens in this locality and is the subject of this paper. This site was excavated by Pete Robertshaw in 1975, and here we expand on his observations to make them directly relevant to the megamidden period. New radiocarbon dates position this site a few centuries before 3265 cal. BP to ca. 2760 cal. BP, with last visits happening from ca. 1990 cal. BP to ca. 625 cal. BP. This study reveals a decrease in bovid foraging efficiency and a concomitant and dramatic increase in the procurement of a number of marine resources from the onset of the site occupation until ca. 2760 cal. BP. Several proxy indicators suggest an increasing occupational intensity at this site as group mobility and foraging range shrank to the coastal margin and adjacent plain during this period. This trend was largely reversed soon after ca. 2000 cal. BP.

Large shell middens or shell mounds are present throughout the world's coastlines. They are frequent expressions of higher population densities, more sedentary lifestyles, social and technological innovation and/or complexity, and overexploitation of large and small prey. Large Holocene shell middens on the west coast of South Africa are known as megamiddens and date to the third millennium BP. Earlier studies have explained their appearance as resulting from a resource intensification process. Megamiddens situated further south in Paternoster village were known to contain comparatively larger quantities of vertebrate fauna and artifacts; however, they remained much less studied until now. Recent findings on Paternoster North megamidden, are reported here and compared to other local sites and to central west coast megamiddens. Previous observations on fauna and artifacts from Paternoster megamiddens are confirmed in this study, with their chronology appearing to be somewhat earlier than that of the central west coast megamiddens. Climatic, geographical, geological, and environmental differences in both terrestrial and coastal settings seem to explain the contrasting records. Further studies on Paternoster megamiddens will improve our understanding of a millennium which has the most intense use of coastal resources in southern African prehistory.

Volume 13 of Biological Observation, published in 2023, contained 39 papers. The largest number of papers in a single volume was in the year 2016, when Volume 7 contained 103 papers.

The forager archaeology of the millennium before 2000 BP in the Elands Bay and Lamberts Bay areas (central west coast), is of relevance not only in itself, but also for adding to the understanding of the origin and rapid establishment of a stock-keeping economy on the South African west coast. Until recently, the archaeology of the Vredenburg Peninsula has been dominated by research on herder groups after 2000 BP while research on local hunter-gatherers from the same area is limited. Many Cultural Resource Management projects on pre-2000 BP sites have been done. We report on a megamidden (PN1062) in Paternoster dating to the third millennium BP, and reconstruct the settlement and subsistence trends during this time. PN1062 is distinct from the central west coast megamiddens because of its greater quantities and diversity of vertebrate remains and artefacts. It is likely that family groups settled at PN1062 c.3325-2490 cal BP and the greatest occupational intensity happened c.2820 cal BP. Two other Paternoster middens were also visited at this time. Intense exploitation of marine molluscs is reflected at this time by shrinking mean sizes of black mussels (Choromytilus meridionalis) and subsequent reformulation of shellfish foraging by emphasising collection more on one reef over the other, and thus harvesting a different mix of shellfish. Tortoises were increasingly favoured over mammals, showing a decreasing foraging radius over time. Both terrestrial and marine resources were procured intensively in Paternoster until a few centuries before 2000 BP. Further dates from 1062 megamidden and the study of nearby and contemporary sites would serve to test these scenarios and determine their relevance regarding the arrival and spread of herding along the South African west coast.

Between 2010 and 2022, the online journal Biodiversity Observations published 389 papers. In January 2023, the total number of downloads of these papers was 462,000. Between 2018 and 2022, 138 of the papers had been cited in Google Scholar, and had generated a total of 421 citations. The journal plans to continue publishing descriptive papers which report observations relating to biodiversity.

This paper describes the history of the Virtual Museum, originally developed in 2005 for the Southern African Reptile Conservation Assessment (SARCA), which was sponsored by the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI). The Virtual Museum grew to have 17 sections and the associated database, in 2023, contained 2.2 million biodiversity records from Africa. We summarize the major outputs of this initiative, and discuss potential future uses of the database.

Ground-based repeat photography has a long history in documenting landscape change. Given the growing concern over the scale and rate of global change related phenomena, such as climate and land-use change, the benefits of involving the wider public in data collection efforts is increasingly being realised. Public involvement is particularly useful in national- and international-scale photographic monitoring projects where data collection spans relatively large spatial scales and is consequently expensive to gather, local knowledge is useful, and no specific training and only basic photographic equipment is required. Several research-grade repeat photography projects exist worldwide, but few rely on the involvement of citizen scientists. Here we introduce a citizen science repeat photography project of southern African landscapes: rePhotoSA. We evaluate the progress of the project to date and describe the level of utility of citizen science contributions to research. We also reflect on four key activities that are needed to ensure the long-term success of the project including attracting and keeping citizen scientists involved, maintaining data quality, providing accurate photo-site location information, and effective dissemination of scientific knowledge to the public. We conclude that the continued use of historical photographs as a unique source of historical environmental data to complement traditional scientific methods of data collection may improve our overall understanding of changing landscapes, and may serve as an effective means of illustrating landscape- and global change to the general public.

Humans began to exploit aquatic resources routinely since the late Middle Pleistocene (c. 162 ka), as evidenced by PP13B Cave in the southern Cape of South Africa. Hard bottom or rocky shore species were among the first to be collected, and although they dominate Pleistocene and Holocene archaeomalacological assemblages locally, the soft-bottom Donax serra clam began to be collected systematically near PP13B by 110 ka. Since then, D. serra appears intermittently in early and Holocene middens. Earlier studies on PP13B D. serra assemblages dated to 110-91 ka concluded that initial collection of D. serra similar to 110 ka was unselective in terms of shell size and was undertaken along the entire tidal gradient. In later visits similar to 91 ka, foragers narrowed their collection to the mid intertidal where most larger clams live, thus increasing the efficiency of D. serra procurement. In this paper, further metrical data from other Pleistocene and late Holocene assemblages is presented in order to test these conclusions. Pleistocene data from mainly the Klasies River main site also reflect small sizes as in contemporary levels from PP13B; however, it is not possible to generalise that the increase in foraging efficiency observed in PP13B also applies to post 90 ka contexts overall due to a lack of Pleistocene samples dating to this latter period. However, it is clear that foraging efficiency was comparatively higher in the Plettenberg Bay and Mossel Bay areas since the early Holocene. Variability among Holocene D. serra assemblages appear to be explained also in terms of foraging ranges. Settlement patterns, group size and/or its composition may be factors behind the generally intermittent presence of D. serra in the southern Cape middens.

This report describes progress with the atlas of lacewings, defined as the orders Neuroptera and Megaloptera, up to 31 March 2019. The database of the project contained 15,781 records, in two components - 12,898 specimen records and 2,883 photographic records - submitted to the LacewingMAP section of the Virtual Museum, over a period of 4.5 years (September 2014 to March 2019). The average rate of submission of photographic records for LacewingMAP for the four calendar years 2015 to 2018 was 566 per year, three times faster than the rate at which the specimen database grew during the second half of the 20th century. 234 citizen scientists contributed photographic records to LacewingMAP. It seems that almost all of these people have primary interests in other taxa, and that the records submitted to LacewingMAP were a 'by-catch'. Photographs of at least two new species were submitted by citizen scientists during 2018.

Some invasive species are known to compete with and even displace indigenous species. Two Accipiter species historically indigenous to eastern South Africa have colonised the Cape Peninsula in the south-west of the country and have become sympatric with a third local Accipiter species. We investigated the changes in the occurrence reporting rates of all three species on the Cape Peninsula between 1982 and 2018 using data from the Atlas of the Birds of the Southwestern Cape and from the two data collection periods of the Southern African Bird Atlas Project (SABAP1 and 2). We found that the Black Sparrowhawk Accipiter melanoleucus has become more abundant and that the African Goshawk A. tachiro and the historically local Rufous-breasted Sparrowhawk A. rufiventris have declined since the invasion of the Cape Peninsula by Black Sparrowhawks, suggesting that the latter species has outcompeted and at least partially displaced the other two species. Although that may be the case, since the three species seem to have relatively stabilised population sizes after 2010 this could suggest progressive resource partitioning with a level of ecological isolation following the initial dominance interactions. Since the westward expansion of the ranges of the Black Sparrowhawk and the African Goshawk along the southern coastal region of South Africa were most likely facilitated by anthropogenic alteration of the landscape ultimately leading to the sympatry of the three species on the Cape Peninsula, we suggest that this is therefore a case of indirect human-caused alien invasion. Implications des modifications de l'aire de repartition et de la sympatrie resultante chez trois Accipiter sur la Peninsule du Cap, Afrique du SudCertaines especes invasives sont connues pour entrer en competition et parfois meme deplacer des especes indigenes. Deux especes d'Accipiter historiquement indigenes en Afrique du Sud orientale ont colonise la Peninsule du Cap dans le sud-est du pays et sont devenues sympatriques avec une troisieme espece locale d'Accipiter. Nous avons etudie les changements dans les taux de signalement des occurrences des trois especes dans la Peninsule du Cap entre 1982 et 2018 en utilisant les donnees de l'Atlas des oiseaux du Sud-Ouest du Cap et des deux periodes de collecte des donnees du projet d'Atlas des oiseaux d'Afrique australe (SABAP1 et 2). Nous avons decouvert que l'Autour noir Accipiter melanoleucus est devenu plus abondant et que l'Autour tachiro A. tachiro et l'Epervier menu A. rufiventris, et l'historiquement local, ont declines depuis l'invasion de la Peninsule du Cap par les Autours noirs. Ceci laisse supposer que cette derniere espece a concurrence et a au moins partiellement deplace les deux autres especes. Bien que cela soit puisse etre le cas, etant donne que les populations des trois especes semblent avoir une taille des populations relativement stabilisees depuis 2010, cela pourrait suggerer une repartition progressive des ressources avec un niveau d'isolement ecologique suite aux interactions de dominations initiales. Etant donne que l'extension occidentale de l'aire de l'Autour noire et de l'Autour tachiro le long des regions cotieres du sud de l'Afrique du sud ont tres probablement ete facilitees par des alterations anthropiques du paysage conduisant finalement a la sympatrie des trois especes sur la Peninsule du Cap, nous suggerons qu'il s'agit la d'un cas d'invasion, non indigene, indirectement causee par l'Homme.

Cape gannet Morus capensis chicks depend entirely on fish prey and metabolic water for water requirements during development. Water loss through evaporative cooling due to heat stress is substantial. We measured water flux and field metabolic rates (FMR) of Cape gannet chicks and adults to determine if gannets developed water saving strategies. The water economy index (WEI, gkJ(-1)) decreased with chick age according to the model WEI=0.676 - 0.272xlog(10)(t), indicating that water efficiency increased with age. At fledging, the WEI of chicks was at the level expected of adult desert birds. Desert birds maintain a low WEI by also having a low FMR, whereas Cape gannet chicks have FMR comparable to other seabird species' nestling requirements. We propose that maintaining low WEI is adaptive for Cape gannets because (1) chicks need to balance water loss through evaporative cooling, (2) fledglings need to overcome a period of up to a week when they cannot ingest any water and (3) adults spend extended periods in the breeding colony during which water can become a limiting factor. Understanding the physiological mechanism of maintaining low WEI will become increasingly important with future rising temperatures.

In the two-year period 1 July 2016 to 30 June 2018, citizen scientists added seven species to the list of dragonflies and damselflies in the Western Cape, bringing the total to 76 species (Figure 1). The database available for this report contained 11,267 records of dragonflies and damselflies. This includes the specimen record dating back to the start of the 20th century. Of these records 2,433 records (22%) were added between July 2016 and June 2017, and 4,202 (37%) between July 2017 and June 2018. Thus 59% of the entire Western Cape database of records of dragonflies and damselflies was contributed by citizen scientists in two years.

The Elands Bay and Lamberts Bay areas have received dedicated attention over the last 40 years. Broad chronological patterns have been established and tested by numerous research projects in the last two decades. Nevertheless, this large corpus of data also reveals that despite much research effort, some periods are better understood than others. For instance, only partial information is available for the Mid-Holocene (8700-4800 cal BP), and astonishingly little is known about the centuries between 1300 and 600 cal BP. Both of these periods were dominated by warm and dry atmospheric conditions, and are known as the Holocene Altithermal and the Medieval Warm Epoch, respectively. But luckily, two of three sites at Soutpansklipheuwel (SPKH) outcrop near Lamberts Bay are now known to have substantial volumes of material dating to the latter and elusive period. This paper reports on recent test excavations at all three sites. The results suggest that outcrops and other high-placed locations were targeted for settlement during this period, probably because of competition resulting directly or indirectly from water shortages and xeric conditions. Abundant supply of fuel from a range of woody shrubs and rainwater accumulating in rock pools made SPKH outcrop especially attractive. Shellfish consumption appears to have been of great importance to groups settling at SPKH, with species diversity largely dictated by the biogeographical distribution of taxa in nearby rocky shores. Exotic lithic raw materials were never dominant, but good effort was made to procure them from distant places, thus influencing mobility. Compared to local sites, backed pieces are unusually common at SPKH and a greater variety of formal tools were used and discarded at this locality. The emerging signs of variability seem to suggest that this hitherto little-known period known as the Medieval Warm Epoch was more eventful than previously suspected.

The largest of all shell middens in South Africa are found on the West Coast between the Olifants River mouth and Vredenburg Peninsula. These 'megamiddens' appear to be the endphase of profound and earlier changes in subsistence and settlement among late Holocene coastal hunter-gatherers. These enormous sites have been minimally sampled, and some of the largest are located in the Lamberts Bay area. Here we report mainly on the Kreefbaai C (KFB C) megamidden and other nearby sites. Considering the visibly vast quantities of marine shells and estimated mass of vertebrate fauna, this site formed as a result of a focused, intense and sustained collecting effort on black mussels for immediate consumption, and also mass processing and drying. Domestic activities contributed to this record to a lesser but important extent. Shellfish foraging strategies changed through time as a result of for aging efficiency considerations, possible depletion of black mussel beds, and/or nearshore palaeoenvironmental changes. KFB C is one meaningful piece of a puzzle where settlement, demographic changes and reconfigurations in subsistence choice combine to present a unique period in the precolonial history of South Africa. The conservation of KFB C and other West Coast megamiddens needs the proactive and joint efforts of academics and heritage practitioners.

During four years 646 breeding Cape gannets (Morus capensis) at two breeding colonies were equipped with GPS-loggers to obtain insight in how foraging behaviour of gannets varied between colonies and whether it was predictive for the “health status” of these colonies. To study the association between foraging tracks and breeding success we also collected data on chick growth. Foraging behaviour of gannets from Malgas Island (South Africa) varied considerably during the breeding season; average trip durations could double between weeks. At Ichaboe Island (Namibia) foraging behaviour varied less, but the gannets made 2.3 h longer trips and had a larger foraging range than the gannets from Malgas. Gannets scavenging for fishery discards made shorter foraging trips than birds foraging for live prey (22.3 vs. 27.3 h respectively), during which they spent less time flying. Scavenging occurred more on Malgas. Chicks from Ichaboe were growing faster and had higher survival rates, possibly associated with the higher proportion of live prey in their diet. The fraction flown during foraging trips was positively associated with chick growth in the colony. Likely this relationship was mediated through diet, as gannets that made longer trips were more likely to return with (good quality) live prey. The fact that predation on chicks in the colony can be substantial and that overwinter mortality may vary a lot can explain why we could not confirm an earlier described relationship between parental foraging behaviour and colony status. The study of parental behaviour is important to explain chick growth, a component of colony health status, but inadequate to predict overall colony health status in Cape gannets.

The number of species of dragonflies and damselflies recorded in the Kruger National, South Africa, was 103 in April 2018. This figure was based on a database containing 2,817 records of Odonata, made since 1980, from the 52 quarter degree grid cells which intersect with the Kruger National Park. Records were available for 41 of the 52 grid cells. The most frequently recorded species were Red-veined Dropwing Trithemis arteriosa (167 records) and the Orange-veined Dropwing Trithemis kirbyi (144 records), both recorded in 33 grid cells, and Southern Banded Groundling Brachythemis leucosticta (175 records) and Broad Scarlet (141 records) both in 29 grid cells. Based on records up to April 2018, the median date of the most recent record for species was September 2017, so that half of the 103 species had been recorded during summer 2017/18. This report could be used to motivate the proclamation of the river and wetland systems of the Kruger National Park as a “Wetland of International Importance” in terms of the Ramsar Convention. Two-thirds of the Odonata of South Africa, and one-eighth of the Odonata of Africa, have been recorded in the Kruger National Park.

Very large West Coast shell middens known as 'megamiddens' reveal the massive scale of marine resource exploitation (c. 3360-2000 cal BP), never experienced before or repeated after, in South Africa. This large-scale procurement of shellfish was most likely for both immediate intake, and their processing and drying for delayed consumption. Megamiddens were preceded by an important reorganisation in the procurement of terrestrial resources, aimed at minimising dietary risk in the face of population growth as group mobility became circumscribed to the coast and Sandveld. The appearance of megamiddens and the additional reformulation of prey choice among both terrestrial and marine taxa were the expression of further such coping mechanisms in the face of persistent population pressure. Partial or summary data have been published so far, but more detailed observations are in need for testing current West Coast scenarios. Here, we report on Grootrif and Malkoppan megamiddens, and discuss their relevance. Variability in their stratigraphy and contents reveals that domestic activities were undertaken along with intense coastal exploitation. Shellfish collection was relatively sustainable initially, but signs of depleting stocks appear when harvests were particularly intense, marine resources made an important contribution to people's diet, and palaeo-oceanographic conditions may have been adverse for shellfish growth. These observations and those from other nearby megamiddens and Steenbokfontein Cave reveal a 1600-year-long dynamic history of profound changes in forager lifeways that precedes, but also connects with, the arrival of a stock-keeping economy in the western Cape c. 2000 cal BR. Formal protection, conservation and additional study of West Coast megamiddens is thus imperative.

This paper reports progress with OdonataMAP, the Atlas of Dragonflies and Damselflies of Africa, for the two-year period 1 July 2016 to 30 June 2018. During the two-year review period, the database for the project grew by 30,423 records to 52,257, starting from 22,809 records collected between 2010 and June 2016. Submissions were made from 25 African countries. In six of the nine provinces of South Africa, the number of OdonataMAP records for the province more than doubled. The provinces in which the number of records were not doubled were Gauteng (44% of records made during reporting period), Free State and North West (both 46%). Five observers contributed more than 1000 records over the two-year period, and a further 10 between 500 and 999 records. The total number of observers for the two-year period was 529, compared with 295 in the 2010–16 period. One of the important success of OdonataMAP during the review period was to increase the number of observers, and to reduce the project’s dependence on a small number of citizen scientists.

The report summarizes our knowledge of the Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies) of Kenya. It is based on 3,376 records, assembled from both the Odonata Database of Africa and the OdonataMAP section of the ADU Virtual Museum. 172 species have been recorded from Kenya. The paper provides an initial list of the Odonata of Kenya.

The Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies) are superb indicators of the quality of fresh water. All communities rely on water, and especially in rural areas water is used directly from rivers. The habitat of the Odonata represents the source of clean and reliable water. So, in a nutshell: What is the use of dragonflies? They are a signpost pointing to healthy freshwater habitat, and freshwater is a resource everyone needs. The dragonflies and damselflies are ambassadors for healthy freshwater ecosystems, and they can be used to monitor the quality of these systems. OdonataMAP is generating a data-rich baseline for the study of future changes in aquatic systems, at both local and global scales. So this atlas has the potential to influence government policy on the use of water resources, especially for the rural poor. No other taxon has the potential to be so politically prominent in this way.