A recent WWF report has estimated almost 3 billion vertebrates have been impacted by the recent bushfires, but admits the lack of data makes it impossible to fully understand the impact on our invertebrates. The new species of spider wasp was collected from Namadgi National Park, during the ACT Bush Blitz in 2018, by CSIRO’s […]

This competition is now closed. Thank you to everyone who entered!  Upload images of three aquatic (marine or freshwater) plants or animals to the Backyard Species Discovery project, and enter by 2 September 2020, for a chance to win a copy of ‘Marine plants of Australia’ by John M. Huisman, published December 2019. If you’re […]

Update: These weekly challenges have now finished but you can still take part in the Backyard Species Discovery project and associated competitions! In the lead up to National Science Week we are setting 10 weekly challenges to support our Backyard Species Discovery virtual Bush Blitz. Each Wednesday, starting June 10, a new challenge will be […]

Preliminary results from the Little Desert Bush Blitz are very exciting. The spider team were particularly successful, finding a diverse array of eight-legged specimens from large wolf spiders to tiny peacock spiders. They are confident of at least 4 putative new species including a jumping spider that looks like a humbug lolly, a peacock spider […]

It’s day one on the Little Desert Bush Blitz in western Victoria! Scientists from Museums Victoria, Melbourne Herbarium, Queensland Museum and the University of NSW are being briefed before they head into the field to begin their first day of collection. They will set up standard pitfall traps to collect reptiles and amphibians, mini pitfall […]

From 17-28 June 2019 we’re holding a Bush Blitz in the North West Cape region of Western Australia near Exmouth, focussing on Cape Range National Park. The North West Cape peninsula is floristically rich for an arid limestone environment and supports populations of flora from temperate, arid and tropical areas. Habitats for fauna include mangroves, […]