Professor Colleen Downs

Professor Colleen Downs is a professor of zoology in the school of life sciences, and a university fellow at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), Pietermaritzburg campus. Downs is the South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) chair in Ecosystem Health and Biodiversity at UKZN, with field laboratories in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape. She obtained a PhD in zoology from the University of Natal (now UKZN).

Downs is a terrestrial vertebrate biologist with broad and interdisciplinary research interests. These include conservation, ecology, physiology and the behaviour of terrestrial vertebrates in unpredictable environments and with changing land use. She is interested in how changing land use affects biodiversity and ecosystem health. Some of her work includes understanding the urban ecology of various species and their persistence. She has contributed to the understanding of the relationships between the physiology, behaviour and ecology of a range of southern African terrestrial vertebrates, including leopard tortoises, Nile crocodiles, and various bird species and small mammals. She conducted research on the effects of changing land use and ecosystem health in KwaZulu-Natal with relevance to animals such as bushbucks, oribis, pelicans, Nile crocodiles, fruit bats, servals, genets, raptors and hadedas. Her work includes highlighting the plight of the Cape parrot, South Africa’s only endemic parrot and a threatened species.

Downs’s research has been vital for conservation endeavours in South Africa. She has overseen and contributed to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora listings, and more practical conservation programmes, including citizen science projects. Her research findings are used to inform protected area management and extension plans at provincial governmental level, and town planning and green space development at municipal level.

Another of her interests is science education, particularly problems experienced by biology students and the development of strategies to address such problems.

Downs is the author of over 264 international peer-reviewed publications and six book chapters. She has established a strong interdisciplinary research group at UKZN, and currently supervises 15 PhD and 16 MSc students and mentors five postdoctoral fellows. She has successfully supervised 35 PhD and 46 MSc students and has also supervised exchange students from Rèunion Island, Konstanz, Johns Hopkins, Liverpool, and Amsterdam universities.