I’ve used some of these photos in previous posts (here and here), but now I need to post an update. This little dragon is now known as the Monaro grassland earless dragon. I’m excited to be a co-author on the paper, published last week in Royal Society Open Science (open access), that describes this species….
Tag: Biodiversity
How the sugar glider got to Tasmania and why this is bad news for difficult birds
When is a native species also invasive, and how can we tell? This may seem a strange question, but it highlights the difficulty we sometimes face determining the boundaries of the area in which a species naturally occurs. Especially when detection is imperfect and those boundaries may change over time. Animals move. Plants move. Sometimes…
Does Biodiversity Matter?
Through fashion, I showed you how scientists calculate biodiversity and what it means. While some areas of the world are naturally more diverse than others – one thing is true: we are losing biodiversity at an alarming rate due to manmade causes. We are currently in the sixth mass extinction event to ever happen on…
Interpreting the Biodiversity of Your Wardrobe
I love fashion, especially garments with animals on them. I wear so many of them, that my boss asked me about the biodiversity of my closet. I was genuinely curious so I counted all the plants, animals, and any other life forms that I could spot and calculated the Shannon Weiner Index, a real index…
What We’re Reading- Oct 6, 2017
Blood Meal Biodiversity Sampling biodiversity can be difficult for elusive species or at locations that are difficult to reach or navigate within like thick jungle habitat. But researchers have a clever new way of biodiversity estimates in these places, capture invertebrates that feast on blood, then sequence the blood meal to identify the host species. …
What We’re Reading- Sept 29, 2017
Genetic Diversity on the Sea Floor We have so much to learn about the biodiversity in the deep ocean. But for the species we do know, we have barely scratched the surface of understand the genetic diversity of these species. This meta-analysis reviews all population genetic papers (a scant 77) about genetic diversity and population…
The Intersection of Conservation and Urban Evolution
I recently wrote about the new field of urban evolution which seeks to understand how diverse species have responded to the vast environmental changes related to urbanization. I now want to focus on biodiversity conservation in urban environments. You don’t have to be a conservation scientist to intuitively understand that species composition and biodiversity are…
What’s the Biodiversity Within Your Closet?
Conservationists and other nature lovers frequently advocate to save or increase biodiversity, but what exactly is biodiversity? One conjures up images of rainforests, coral reefs or animal clipart arranged artistically. These hint at the concept of biodiversity, which on the surface, seems simple, but gets more complicated once you try to measure it (even for…
There’s no such thing as “boring” data in citizen science
As a child I was hooked on wildlife documentaries (I still am…) and from these I gleaned that the career highlight of any self-respecting botanist or zoologist was to discover a new species. For a while that was my goal too, but then I became sidetracked by questions about genetics and evolution and conservation. Fast…
Bandicoots, the little marsupial diggers
Bandicoots are fascinating creatures, but I suspect few people outside Australia and New Guinea have ever heard of them, well, unless you count Crash Bandicoot… They are probably best known in suburban Australia for infuriating gardeners with the conical pits, or “snout-pokes”, they dig whilst foraging for their food, which varies a little among species but usually includes fungi,…
Species Distributions in Disney’s The Little Mermaid: Part 1- Coral Reefs
This blog post was brought to you by the amazing technology that is the Video Home System. After 10 minutes of figuring out how to hook the VHS up to the smart TV, I could finally watch Disney’s The Little Mermaid, for research of course! But why?! Remember that fan theory hypothesis from last year…
Earth Week 2016: Creating Conservation Advocates
We’re celebrating Earth Week 2016 with suggestions for how to apply the phrase “Earth Day Every Day” to conserving biodiversity. There are a number of great suggestions for things you can do every day to conserve energy and water; but we asked ourselves, what actions can we take to conserve biodiversity? This week we’ll explore:…
WildlifeSNPits 