South Africans have always looked up to Lesotho, quite literally, as the entire landlocked country is on average 900 metres higher than South Africa (Midgley et al. 2023). The high altitude also means that Lesotho has more abundant alpine vegetation (in this case meaning vegetation above 2800 metres above sea level) and harbours a greater diversity of alpine-adapted species.
Travelling through Brazil you find yourself in the Cerrado, a vast tropical savannah just southeast of the Amazon rainforest. Stopping under one of the trees, you sit down for a quick rest and to take in the natural beauty around you. Your eye then caches the movement of a fly landing on the rough bark of the tree and, ever ready as you are, you reach for your camera and inch closer to try and take a good macro photo.
Climate change is an undeniable reality, and while natural climate variations have occurred over millennia, the current pace of change exceeds natural expectations, primarily due to human activities. The most noticeable changes are in the levels of carbon dioxide, temperature and rainfall. These changes will not be the same everywhere.
In April 2022, I led the first biological expedition focusing on dung beetles at Mount Mabu in the Zambézia Province of Mozambique. The expedition team was composed of Dr Werner Strümpher (Ditsong Museum of Natural History), Mr Isildo Nganhane (Universidade Lúrio, Mozambique) and I (PI of the project – Fig. 1). Werner and I flew from South Africa to Nampula (northern Mozambique), and Isildo took a bus from Maputo to Nampula. We hired a company that drove us from Nampula to the village of Tacuane (Zambézia Province, Mozambique). There is no road from Tacuane to Mount Mabu, thus, we hired local porters to carry our camping/kitchen gear and fieldwork equipment (Fig. 2). We took eight hours of hiking from Tacuane to the camping site inside of Mabu Forest.
Tiger Flies (Fig. 1), scientifically called Coenosia are small inconspicuous grey flies. They belong to a family of flies called the Muscidae, generally referred to as “Houseflies” but they are not your stereotypical pesky housefly (Fig. 2) and are not likely to come into your house to irritate you like their cousins. You see, these little flies are actually fierce predators and typically hunt all kinds of insects.