Prof. Julie Coetzee
Deputy Director, Centre for Biological Control, Rhodes University and South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity, South Africa
Julie Coetzee is a Deputy Director of the Centre for Biological Control (CBC) and Professor in Botany at Rhodes University, specialising in the biological control of invasive aquatic plants. Julie is recognised globally for her expertise in the management of invasive aquatic plants and currently leads the extensive biological control program against invasive aquatic plants in South Africa.
Her primary interest is plant-insect interactions, in the applied context of biological control of invasive species. She works on both floating and submerged aquatic weeds, and currently focuses on regime shift and resilience aspects of the invasion ecology of this suite of plants. Other interests include insect physiology, species distribution modelling, aquatic plant ecology and biostatistics.
In Africa, Julie has worked in Mozambique, Cameroon, Morocco and more recently in Kenya and Zimbabwe, as well as Argentina and New Zealand, in developing biological control options. Julie has also sat as the president of the Entomological Society of Southern Africa over the last two years,and is Associate Editor for the journal Hydrobiologia.
Learn more about Prof. Coetzee’s ICAIS presentation here.
