Clarke Scholtz was born and grew up in rural Botswana (Bechuanaland Protectorate), the son of an agriculturalist father and teacher mother.
Living in the bush exposed him to all forms of wildlife from an early age and collecting and keeping snakes, tortoises and all means of orphan animals became a way of life, modelled on the doings of his hero Gerald Durrell, especially those documented in his book “My Family and Other Animals”. His first passion for insects developed around keeping honey bees and studying their behaviour. He has kept honey bees continuously since he was 12 years old and still does. It was this passion that decided him to study entomology at the University of Pretoria where, during the course of his studies, he was introduced to the works of the famous French naturalist Jean-Henri Fabre, who wrote so eloquently of dung beetle behaviour about 100 years ago. This was the defining moment in the start of a lifelong passion for dung beetles and a career as a professional entomologist.
Clarke completed all his studies at UP and, after completing his PhD, was appointed to the academic staff of the Department of Entomology. In 1982 Clarke was promoted to Professor and in 1989 he became head of the Department. In 1994 the Departments of Zoology and Entomology were amalgamated and Clarke was appointed HOD of the new Department of Zoology and Entomology. He held this position for 8 years and then relinquished it to enable him to spend more time on his research.
Clarke has published about 170 research papers in international journals, and three text books (“Insects of Southern Africa”, 1985; reprinted 1986, 1995; 2008: “The African Dung Beetle Genera”, 2008: “Evolutionary Biology and Conservation of Dung Beetles”, 2009).
He has mentored about 50 Masters and Doctoral students. Clarke’s Dung Beetle Research Group at UP currently consists of about 10 post-graduate students and post-doctoral researchers, who study various aspects of dung beetle biology. He also collaborates widely with like-minded researchers in many parts of the world. Clarke has traveled widely in Africa and the world, collecting and studying dung beetles, most recently in Thailand in May.
