Restoring South African subtropical succulent thicket using : root growth of cuttings differs depending on the harvest site during a drought.

The restoration of succulent thicket (the semi-arid components of the Albany Subtropical Thicket biome endemic to South Africa) has largely focused on the reintroduction of L. Jacq-a leaf- and stem-succulent shrub-through the planting of unrooted cuttings directly into field sites. However, there has been inconsistent establishment and survival rates, with low rates potentially due to a range of factors (, post-planting drought, frost or herbivory), including the poor condition of source material used.

Restoring South African subtropical succulent thicket using : exploring the rooting window hypothesis.

Drought prone, arid and semi-arid ecosystems are challenging to restore once degraded due to low levels of natural recruitment and survival of reintroduced plants. This is evident in the restoration of degraded succulent thicket habitats in the Albany Subtropical Thicket Biome located in South Africa. The current restoration practice for this ecosystem focuses predominantly on reintroducing L.

Regeneration dynamics of in restored succulent thicket of South Africa.

Introduction: Over-grazing by livestock has resulted in the widespread degradation of South Africa's succulent thicket ecosystems. This is characterised by a significant reduction in the cover of the dominant succulent shrub, . Because this species is unable to regenerate naturally in degraded habitat, active reintroduction is required to restore ecosystem function.

Automated mapping of canopies for restoration monitoring with convolutional neural networks and heterogeneous unmanned aerial vehicle imagery.

Ecosystem restoration and reforestation often operate at large scales, whereas monitoring practices are usually limited to spatially restricted field measurements that are (i) time- and labour-intensive, and (ii) unable to accurately quantify restoration success over hundreds to thousands of hectares. Recent advances in remote sensing technologies paired with deep learning algorithms provide an unprecedented opportunity for monitoring changes in vegetation cover at spatial and temporal scales. Such data can feed directly into adaptive management practices and provide insights into restoration and regeneration dynamics.

The transition to agricultural cultivation of neo-crops may fail to account for wild genetic diversity patterns: insights from the Cape Floristic Region.

Aim: The global increase in the cultivation of native wild plants has raised concerns regarding potential risks associated with translocating genetic lineages beyond their natural range. This study aimed to investigate whether agricultural cultivation of neo-crops (a) accounts for the levels of genetic diversity present in wild populations, and whether (b) cultivated populations are genetically divergent from wild populations and thus pose a potential threat to wild genetic diversity.

Location: The Cape Floristic Region (CFR), located along the southern Cape of South Africa.

Do Centres of Endemism provide a spatial context for predicting and preserving plant phylogeographic patterns in the Cape Floristic Region, South Africa?

Aim: The evolutionary forces that gave rise to the exceptional plant species richness of the Cape Floristic Region (CFR) have also likely played a role at the intraspecific level (i.e. plant populations)-and thereby generating shared phylogeographic patterns among taxa.

Applied phylogeography of (Fabaceae) highlights the need for 'duty of care' when cultivating honeybush.

Background: The current cultivation and plant breeding of Honeybush tea (produced from members of Vent.) do not consider the genetic diversity nor structuring of wild populations. Thus, wild populations may be at risk of genetic contamination if cultivated plants are grown in the same landscape.

Application of High Resolution Melt analysis (HRM) for screening haplotype variation in a non-model plant genus: Cyclopia (Honeybush).

Aim: This study has three broad aims: to (a) develop genus-specific primers for High Resolution Melt analysis (HRM) of members of Cyclopia Vent., (b) test the haplotype discrimination of HRM compared to Sanger sequencing, and (c) provide an example of using HRM to detect novel haplotype variation in wild Vogel. populations.