| Description | Field notebooks, mortality, nesting, breeding and reproductive data of the giant tortoise, audio-visual material including soundscape recordings, video footage. Extensive photographic slides, prints and two maps.
Dried marine biological specimens (1970s): porcupine ray tails x 2 (Urogymnus asperrimus), giant clam shell (Tridacna gigas), lovely abalone (Haliotis clathrata); oceanic whitetip shark jaws x 2 (Carcharhinus longimanus); dorsal scutes x2.
Most material dates from Swingland's time on the Aldabra Atoll from 1974-1979 but there is addtional correspondence post-dating this, as well as papers relating to 'Operation Drake' in 1980 and the Smithsonian Aldabra expedition in the 1990s. |
| Administrative history | Although not a Fellow of the Royal Society Ian Swingland worked at the Aldabra Research Station, built by the Royal Society in 1969 after an initial expeditionary phase. Swingland was employed by the Zoology Department of the University of Oxford to carry out scientific studies centred on the giant tortoise on the Aldabra Atoll where he was based at the Royal Society’s Aldabra Research Station from 1974-1979. |