Jaimie Whyte

BSc Hons (Cape Town)

Jaimie grew up in Pietermaritzburg and spent all her free time outdoors.  She moved to Cape Town to do her Bachelor's degree in 2013, majoring in Applied Biology, Marine Biology and Business French. In 2017 She completed a 6-month internship in Mauritius, working on coral reef restoration and maintenance and then moved to England to work at an international school in Kent. In July 2018 Jaimie took up a position as a Bird Rehabilitator at SANCCOB, working with a variety of seabirds and was involved in rehabilitation work to return injured and emaciated seabirds to the wild as well as with washing oiled birds and rearing chicks. This work is what really sparked her love for birds.  She returned to UCT to do an Honours degree in Biology in 2020 and investigated the influence of moult on the long bone microstructure of afrotropical waterbirds. Jaimie's research interests include the behaviour and physiology of birds and other animals and using information from these fields to aid conservation.  

In her MSc dissertation, Jaimie will be studying the impacts of hot weather on the behaviour and breeding success of white-browed sparrow-weavers in the Kalahari.  She is working as part of the HotBirds Research Team and will further work already done on this and other species in the area.  Many species are affected by increasing temperatures and forced to adapt their behaviour and activity to seek shade and thermoregulate.  These behavioural changes, while reducing physiological costs, present missed opportunity costs in terms of foraging and care and provisioning for offspring which will affect population persistence of Kalahari birds. Jaimie aims to gather data which will enhance our capacity to predict arid-zone species’ vulnerabilities to climate change.

Thesis (registered at the University of Pretoria):
The costs of keeping cool: impacts of hot weather on behaviour and breeding success of white-browed sparrow-weavers. (Supervisors: Prof. Andrew McKechnie (UP) and Dr Susie Cunningham).