The iNaturalist City Nature Challenge is an annual event where cities around the world compete to record the most observations and species, and have the greatest number of participants over a four-day period. Science Researcher Lara Shepherd highlights some of the interesting discoveries made during the challenge, in what isRead more
Wellington is known for being a biodiversity-rich city with many of its surrounding hills protected in reserves and birdlife booming from active predator control. But Wellington is also a harbour city with spectacular wildlife concealed beneath its waves. Luckily, Wellington is also home to numerous talented underwater photographers, providing glimpses of these otherwise hidden treasures. Te Papa researcher Lara Shepherd shares her favourite photos of Wellington’s amazing underwater life and, just in time for the upcoming iNaturalist 2024 City Nature Challenge (April 26–April 29), provides suggestions for how to learn more about the oft-overlooked critters in our marine ‘backyard’.Read more
April Fool’s Day is a time when fibs, fabrications, and falsehoods come to the fore! While we humans do this in (mostly) good fun, in nature deception is a serious business, often with life-or-death stakes. In this post, Phil Sirvid and Lara Shepherd share some of their favourite liars fromRead more
Te Papa recently imaged its Miocene plant fossils and made the images available online. Amongst these are the tiny fossilised fruit of a coconut-like plant that grew in Aotearoa New Zealand millions of years ago. Natural history researcher Lara Shepherd discusses what we know (and don’t know) about these ‘mini-coconuts’.Read more
Ever wondered what curators take with them when they go out on the field (or in the mountains, or down in the depths of the oceans)? Let’s begin with botanists Lara Shepherd and Leon Perrie.Read more
Te Papa contains about 1.5 million natural history specimens. Many of these have been gifted by donors with some 16 000 people collecting specimens for Te Papa. Research Associate Peter Beveridge has donated over 6000 specimens to Te Papa, with his first donation more than 70 years ago. Science ResearcherRead more
Toropapa are some of Aotearoa’s most intriguing plants. This genus of shrubs has been baffling botanists for over 100 years. Not only do they show extreme variation in leaf shape but some of the leaf forms bear an uncanny resemblance to unrelated plant species. Te Papa scientist Lara Shepherd recently led a team that examined the relationships of a selection of leaf forms – could these different forms actually be different species?Read more
Two Te Papa botanists recently spent a week collecting ferns on Lord Howe Island. They were adeptly guided by Lord Howe Island museum curator Ian Hutton and joined by Daniel Ohlsen from the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria. The natural history of Lord Howe Island was introduced in an earlier blogRead more
Exotic species that spread into the wild are one of the pressures impacting the uniquely special biodiversity of Aotearoa New Zealand. Biosecurity measures are intended to mitigate this. But one aspect of the country’s biosecurity was recently criticised as patchy, limited, passive, and serendipitous. Curator of Botany Leon Perrie andRead more
Two Te Papa botanists recently spent a week collecting ferns on Lord Howe Island. They were adeptly guided by Lord Howe Island museum curator Ian Hutton and joined by Daniel Ohlsen from the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria. Lord Howe Island is a nature-lovers’ paradise with much of the island protected in reserve and mammal pests recently eradicated. Our fern findings will be detailed in a future blog post but here Lara Shepherd and Leon Perrie discuss the natural history of Lord Howe Island and introduce some of its flowering plants.Read more
I recently spent a week on Norfolk Island collecting ferns. One non-fern plant I was particularly keen to see was harakeke (Phormium tenax), on which I’ve done recent genetic work. On Norfolk Island it is known as flax, so I’ll use that name here. What I hadn’t appreciated before the trip was the significance of flax to the settlement of Norfolk Island.Read more
The iNaturalist City Nature Challenge is an annual event to see which city can record the most observations, species, and participants over a four-day period. 2023 was the third year that Wellington has participated. Science Researcher Lara Shepherd highlights some of the interesting discoveries made during the challenge. This yearRead more
Three of our botanists recently spent a week on Norfolk Island collecting ferns with colleagues from the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria. Our fern findings will be detailed in a future blog post but here we discuss interesting flowering plants that we saw – some of which were very familiar to us as New Zealanders but others were completely new!Read more
Speargrasses, with their sharp leaves and flower spikes, may look like a plant you want to avoid at all costs but a number of critters call them home, including the charismatic speargrass weevils. Science researcher Lara Shepherd introduces these weevils, plus some other critters that utilise speargrass plants. When IRead more
The large-leaved Aciphylla speargrasses or taramea are difficult plants to collect. Their rigid leaves are tipped in a sharp point and the bracts on their flower spikes are similarly ferocious. These defences are thought to have evolved to avoid browsing by moa, but they also work against botanists! Consequently, speargrasses are under‑represented in plant collections (herbaria). Te Papa Research Scientist Lara Shepherd and Botany Curator Leon Perrie describe how they approached sampling speargrasses on their recent collecting trip.Read more
