Professor Claire Spottiswoode
Project leader, University of Cambridge and University of Cape Town
Projecto Sego Leadership Team
Iahaia “Mele” Buanachique
Mele is a resident of Mbamba village and been a honey-hunter since his early teens. He gets involved in night honey-harvests from baobab trees as well as following honeyguides and harvesting honey in the day. He has helped us with field work (especially following honeyguides, trapping honeyguides, and radio tracking) since 2017, when he was also the winner of our annual prize for the best data collector.
Musaji Muamedi
Musaji was born and raised in Nkuti village. He has honey-hunted for over a decade and has worked closely with us since 2015, when he helped extensively with playback experiments. Over the years he has helped with numerous field experiments, honeyguide trapping, and camera trapping. His extraordinary ability to spot bees’ nest is much admired. He has been part of our leadership team since its inception in 2017.
Carvalho Issa Nanguar
Carvalho was born and raised in Mbamba village and learnt to honey-hunt in his teens from his step father, Seliano Rucunua. He often honey-hunts together with his family; one of his wives is also a talented honey-hunter, and he and she both started working with the project in 2018. Since then Carvalho has helped us with many of our field experiments, in particular with honeyguides trapping and playback transects.
Seliano Alberto Runcunua
Seliano is a life-long ‘professional’ honey-hunter who grew up to the south of Niassa and first moved to Mbamba village to find bees and harvest honey in the expansive woodlands of the reserve. He regularly honey-hunts with his wife, Fatima, who is also part of our team, and his passion for all things honey-hunting is truly infectious. He first started collecting data for the project in 2018 and won our annual prize for the best data collector in 2019, when he also joined our leadership group.
Projecto Sego Data Collection Team
Honey-hunting research network
Anap Ishaku Afan
I am a conservation biologist, ornithologist and nature enthusiast. I am passionate about avian species, ecology and biodiversity conservation. I developed this passion during my internship at the A.P Leventis Ornithological Research Institute (APLORI), in Nigeria where I also completed my MSc in Conservation Biology and currently work as a Research Associate. My research interest focuses on behavioral ecology as I find human-wildlife mutualism fascinating. In early 2022, I won a Career Development Bursary from the British Ornithological Union (BOU) to help realise a project to investigate the state of honey-hunting and human-honeyguide mutualism in Nigeria. As part of this opportunity, I will be spending some time at the University of Cape Town to write up my findings.
George Malembo M’manga
I am an MSc student in Forestry and Environmental Management at Mzuzu University in northern Malawi. I am passionate about ecology, ornithology, environmental education, and statistics. I am also an active member of the Wildlife and Environmental Society of Malawi. For my MSc thesis, I will be investigating honeyguides, honey-hunting and the current state of human-honeyguide mutualism in northern Malawi, made possible by a research grant from the Nyika Vwaza (UK) Trust. I speak Chichewa, Tumbuka and English, which will facilitate interviews. My project will be supervised by Dr Jessica van der Wal, Dr Tiwonge Mzumara-Gawa (Malawi University of Science and Technology, Malawi) and Dr Lusayo Mwabumba (Mzuzu University, Malawi).
Wiro-Bless Kamboe
I am a wildlife biologist, and currently a teaching and research assistant in the Department of Biodiversity Conservation and Management, at the University for Development Studies in Ghana. Growing up, I always loved interacting with animals, and had an interest in animal welfare. This inspired and motivated me to pursue a BSc in Range and Wildlife Management at the University for Development Studies in Ghana. In collaboration with the African Honeyguides Research Project, I am currently surveying and describing remaining honey-hunting cultures in Ghana, and investigating the relationship people have with honeyguides. I am also interested to understand how increased popularity of beekeeping has affected honey-hunting over the years. I hope to pursue a MSc Cape Town in 2023 on this topic.
Collaborators
Professor Sally Archibald
School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
We work with Sally on understanding the landscape consequences of the honeyguide-human mutualism, in particular via its impact on fire regimes.
Dr Colleen Begg & Keith Begg
Niassa Carnivore Project, Mozambique
We have collaborated closely with Colleen and Keith on understanding reciprocal communication between humans and honeyguides, and they and their team at the Mariri Environmental Centre continue to crucially inspire, advise and support many aspects of our research.
Professor Robin Crewe
Department of Zoology and Entomology, University of Pretoria, South Africa
We work with Robin and his team on understanding the influence of the honeyguide-human mutualism on bee ecology.
Dr Pietro d’Amelio
FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, University of Cape Town, South Africa
We work with Pietro on bioacoustic analyses to understand cultural variation in the signals human give to honeyguides.
Celestino Dauda
Niassa Carnivore Project, Mozambique
We work with Dauda on mapping honey-hunting culture in communities throughout the Niassa National Reserve.
Dr Lynn Dicks
Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, UK
We work with Lynn on understanding the influence of the honeyguide-human mutualism on pollination ecosystem services.
Professor Timm Hoffman
Plant Conservation Unit, University of Cape Town, South Africa
We work with Timm on understanding the landscape consequences of the honeyguide-human mutualism, in particular via its impact on tree ecology.
Dr Anne Kandler & Dr Laurel Fogarty
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
We work with Anne and Laurel on mathematical modelling of social learning and cultural evolution in honeyguide-human mutualism.
Hermenegildo Matimele
National Herbarium, Maputo, Mozambique
We work with Hermenegildo on understanding the landscape consequences of the honeyguide-human mutualism, in particular via its impact on tree ecology.
Professor Timm Hoffman
Plant Conservation Unit, University of Cape Town, South Africa
We work with Timm on understanding the landscape consequences of the honeyguide-human mutualism, in particular via its impact on tree ecology.
Dr Celiwe Ngcamphalala
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Cape Town, South Africa
We work with Celiwe on understanding the current state of human-honeyguide mutualism in the Kingdom of Eswatini
Dr Colleen Seymour
South African National Biodiversity Institute, Cape Town, South Africa
We work with Colleen on understanding the influence of the honeyguide-human mutualism on pollination ecosystem services.
Dr Brian Wood
Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany
We collaborate closely with Brian in many aspects of our work, including understanding the impact on the honeyguide-human mutualism of cultural variation in human signals in Mozambique and Tanzania, and the mutualism’s impact on human foraging ecology.
Past Colleagues
Orlando Ncuela
Projecto Sego local data manager
Antonio Ngovene
Intern, Edward O Wilson Laboratory of Biodiversity, Gorongosa National Park
Dr James St Clair
Postdoc, University of Cambridge