Department of Zoological Science

Overview

The history and realization of the Department of Zoological Sciences goes back to the foundation of the Department of Biology under the then University College of Addis Ababa in 1950. This was started by teaching the courses General Biology and General Zoology to students of Biology. The first batch of BSc graduates in Biology graduated in 1957. With the establishment of Haileselassie I University in 1961, the Faculty of Science (and Department of Biology) was incorporated into the University. The Natural History Museum was founded in the second half of the 1960s. Starting from the early 1970s, many Ethiopians started to join the department as staff members, and with the launching of the graduate program (MSc) in Zoology or Botany stream in 1978, the number of zoological courses given was increased. The PhD program at the Department of Biology was launched in January 1987. Most of the research work of these students was based on Ethiopian problems and needs. Such a scheme also provided the Department with substantial research grants from abroad including the Freshwater Fisheries and Limnology Project (CIDA, Canadian). The Natural History Museum became an integral component of the zoological teaching and research arm of the Department.

Curriculum revisions were done in the Department over the years to include General Zoology, the Animal Kingdom, Heredity, Evolution, and Histology and Embryology. For BSc students, the Science Stream has been slightly modified to suit the present objectives and needs of the country such that students can partly fulfill their aspirations and the expectations of their employers by taking a total of 16 credit hour additional courses in any one of four Units, including Zoological Sciences, during the last year(s) of their training. The MSc program that was started in 1978 developed in 1995 to incorporate the following specializations in zoological streams:  Ecological and Systematic Zoology; Fisheries and Aquatic Science; Insect Sciences. The Insect Sciences MSc program is to serve as an East African Regional Program to be conducted in collaboration with the International Center for Insect physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) through the African Regional Postgraduate program in Insect Sciences (ARPPIS). An additional stream on Dry Land Biodiversity was launched in 1997. The PhD training program initiated in 1987 is of a “sandwich” scheme with foreign universities, and included, among others, insect sciences and aquatic biology. To date, two candidates in Aquatic Biology and one in Insect Sciences have graduated from the PhD program. Many staff members have been trained in a more conventional way mostly in Germany, the UK and the USA. Some technical staff members take care of the laboratory activities, or assistants are employed on contractual basis. Hundreds of students have graduated (with Certificates, Diplomas, BSc Degrees, Masters, and PhDs) over the past decades.

Most of the research conducted and published in the 1960s was conducted by foreign professionals. Since 1970, the participation of Ethiopian staff in the research activities of the Department has grown considerably. Over 80 scientific papers have been published in reputable journals in the first 25 years of the existence of the Department of Biology. Some of the zoological publications of this period, among others, include: E.K. Urban, Bibliography of the Avifauna of Ethiopia, 1970; E.K.Urban, and L.H.Brown, A checklist of the Birds of Ethiopia,1971; Fesseha Haile Meskel, Larger Games of Ethiopia (in Amharic) 1974; ShibruTedla, Fresh water Fishes of Ethiopia, 1973, Monograph. Today, many researchers have modest funds to conduct research on animal ecology, fisheries biology and limnology. On average, the staff of the Department of Biology publishes more than 30 scientific papers annually.

Inter-institutional research collaboration was established between animal ecologists and fisheries biologists with the Ethiopian Science and Technology Commission in the Joint Ethio-Russian Biological Expedition; limnologists of the Department have been collaborating with the Fisheries Development Agency; the Non-Human Primates project with the Kyoto University, Japan and Washington and New York Universities in the USA. The Department had been housing the Wildlife Society of Ethiopia until the latter acquired its own office outside the campus.

The Zoological Sciences Department started running as a full-fledged Department in April 2012, although the three streams within the Program Unit have been running their respective graduate programs for the last several years within the Biology Department. The Department has 12 academic staff members, eleven of whom are PhD holders and one a PhD candidate. Over 20 MSc and 65 PhD students are currently pursuing their graduate studies in the Zoological Department.

Mission of the Department of Zoological Sciences

The mission of the Department of Zoological Sciences is to sustainably develop the zoological resources of the country so as to benefit the Ethiopian people and conserve the zoological diversity of the country for posterity and humankind.

Goal of the Department of Zoological Sciences

The goal of the Department is to satisfy the growing shortage of Zoology teachers, researchers and development workers that the country is experiencing due to the rapid expansion of regional universities, colleges, research centers, conservation areas, water projects and agricultural activities country-wide. This is achieved through quality teaching, research, outreach and community services in the different disciplines of the Zoological Sciences.

Department Objectives

The Zoological Sciences Department conducts research and teaching in three major disciplines, namely Ecological and Systematic Zoology, Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, and Insect Sciences. The teaching program also includes more general courses for undergraduate students. The graduate program currently has several PhD and MSc students doing research in basic and applied research topics. Research works mainly address ecological surveys (occurrence, abundance, distribution, habitat), evolutionary, behavioral, genetic, and conservation assessments of terrestrial vertebrate and invertebrate fauna, as well as aquatic (nekton, plankton, benthic, macrophyte) communities along with hydrological data. Collections of zoological specimens are kept at the Zoological Natural History Museum for research reference, public exhibition and documentation. The aim is to expand the museum’s collections, at the same time using them for teaching and research purposes