Bettine van Vuuren

Bettine Jansen van Vuuren is a Professor of Zoology and deputy Head of Department of the Department of Zoology at the University of Johannesburg.

Van Vuuren studied at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. She received a B.Sc. (Hons) Zoology in 1992 and M.Sc. in 1995. She was awarded a PhD in Zoology in 2000 on the topic 'Molecular phylogeny of duiker antelope (Mammalia: Cephalophini)’. She is a current member of the Entomological Society of Southern Africa, the Zoological Society of Southern Africa, the International Biogeography Society, the Southern Association of Botanists and the Southern African Wildlife Management Association. After graduating her PhD, she worked as an academic at Stellenbosch University and University of Montpellier II before joining the University of Johannesburg.

Van Vuuren's research focuses on population genetics, conservation biology, conservation genetics and the study of invasive species and has been a professor at the University of Johannesburg since 2011. In addition to publication of academic articles, she is heavily involved in efforts to eradicate invasive species, in particular the Department of Science and Technology and National Research Foundation Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology. She has collaborated on a number of projects, including providing a Cephalophus DNA collection to the Central African Duiker Project to help aid construction of a reference phylogeny. Her work looks at how phenotypic plasticity, ecotypic variation and genetic variation of indigenous and introduced species affect their adaptation to climate change.

She as the coordinator for the Vertebrates (excluding fish) task team to the South African National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act (NEM:BA) and was the genetics consultant toe the South African Conservation Agencies and Game Industry. van Vuuren served as the Vice-Chair of the South African National Bioinformatics Institute's Foundational Biodiversity Information Programme steering committee from 2014-2016 and is the 2016 President of the Zoological Society of Southern Africa. She has also been an editor for the subject ‘Landscape Ecology and Ecosystem‘ for the journal BMC Ecology since 2016.

Van Vuuren is an official South African delegate to the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research and the Vice-Chair of the Standing Scientific Group on Life Sciences since 2010 and South African representative on for the Action Group on Integrated Science for the Sub-Antarctic. She has worked extensively on Marion Island (of the Prince Edward Islands) as a project leader and was the first female scientist Chief Scientist in the South African National Antarctic Programme's annual relief voyage in 2006.