Nico Avenant’s observations made during his post-graduate studies, museum collection trips and involvement with environmental impact assessments, led to his current research field, i.e. small mammal community characteristics as indicators of habitat integrity. For this, he has worked in a large diversity of habitats, in different management areas (including formal nature reserves and other protected areas, conservancies, wetlands, pans, game farms, commercial stock and crop farms, subsistence farming areas, coastlines, open-cast mines, an army training base and a botanical garden), in the different countries South Africa, Lesotho, Eswatini, Namibia, Malawi and Cambodia, and on Sub-Antarctic Marion Island.
