Ruan van Mazijk

Ruan van Mazijk

An ecology and evolutionary biology Masters student at the Dept. of Biological Science, University of Cape Town

Projects & publications

Journal articles

Van Mazijk, R., Cramer, M.D. & Verboom, G.A. (In prep.). The role of environmental heterogeneity in determining plant species richness in the GCFR & SWAFR. Journal of Biogeography

Cramer, M.D., Wootton, L.M., van Mazijk, R. & Verboom, G.A. (In press). New regionally-modelled soil layers improve prediction of vegetation type relative to that based on global soil models. Diversity & Distributions

Van Mazijk, R., Smyth, L.K., Weideman, E.A. & West, A.G. (2018). Isotopic tracing of stormwater in the urban Liesbeek River. Water SA 44(4):674–679. DOI: 10.4314/wsa.v44i4.16. (Open access! See also the GitHub repository for the data-sets and analyses here.)

Elliott, T.L., Laidler, G., Muasya, A.M., Muthaphuli, N. & van Mazijk, R. (In press). Foregrounding sedges: bringing the neglected Cape Schoenoid sedges to the forefront of genomic research. Veld & Flora.

Projects

Genome-size, ecophysiology & phenology in CFR sedges

My MSc has me investigating the links between genome-size and ecophysiological limitations, such as water-use efficiency, in the sedge genera Schoenus L. and Tetraria Beauv (Cyperaceae, tribe Schoeneae)—all fynbos species in the Cape Floristic Region (CFR). I’m using morphological, physiological and phenological data to ascertain how (or if) rampant polyploidisation events in the Schoenus lineage affect those species’ ecologies, and comparing this to the polyploid-poor Tetraria species.

My supervisors are Associate Profs Muthama Muasya, Tony Verboom and Adam West. See the ResearchGate project here.

Environmental heterogeneity & plant diversity in mediterranean-type flora

My largest side-project carries on from my BSc Hons work with Associate Prof Tony Verboom and Prof Mike Cramer.

It’s a macroecology project, where we aim to quantify how environmental heterogeneity relates to patterns of plant species richness and turnover in the Greater Cape Floristic Region and in the Southwest Australia Floristic Region. We compare the environmental heterogeneity in each region, how species richness and turnover interact in each region to produce the observed patterns of richness, and what different forms of environmental heterogeneity better predict richness in each region.

This is currently a publication in prep. for submission to the Journal of Biogeography. See the ResearchGate project here.

Gloger’s rule

During my Honours year I also wrote an essay on Gloger’s ecogeographic rule that I’m fairly proud of.