Did you know New Zealand has its own Pokémon? It’s called Relicanth and our science researcher Rodrigo Salvador has been speculating on why this creature was chosen to represent Aotearoa.Read more
Bird experts Colin Miskelly and Alan Tennyson visited the islands in late January, and here they document some of the extraordinary diversity of seabirds that breed on these little-known islands.Read more
The 12,000th image loaded on New Zealand Birds Online was of a cute fluffy baby goose, taken in Hungary. Bird expert Colin Miskelly explains how this image ended up on a New Zealand website.Read more
Elements of biology entail a certain ‘eww’ factor – and studying the diet of seabirds certainly fits that description. In research into the foraging habits of Buller’s albatross, a threatened endemic species from southern New Zealand, published in the journal Plos one in 2017, scientist Dr Susan Waugh and colleagues discovered more thanRead more
Bird expert Colin Miskelly recently joined an albatross research team on the rarely visited Disappointment Island in the subantarctic Auckland Islands. But he was on a separate mission to research the more secretive species on this misnamed gem of an island.Read more
White-tails are blamed for lots of nasty symptoms, and have developed something of a bad reputation, but is it deserved? Bug expert Phil Sirvid sorts fact from fiction.Read more
The Pacific island nation of Tokelau is one of the most remote places on the planet, and, with the entire country sitting metres above sea level, one of the most under threat from climate change. Media creator Kate Whitley describes the journey to this vulnerable ‘necklace of small islands’.Read more
Storing collections in the right space and environment is incredibly important in museums – so would you be surprised to see natural history specimens stored in colourful vintage cigarette packets? Curator Alan Tennyson and conservator Robert Clendon shed light on past practice. Modern museum storage involves rows and rows ofRead more
What do you do when you discover what is possibly the largest penguin ever? You name it after your mum. This is what Curator Vertebrates Alan Tennyson – who has a paper on the discovery out today – did.Read more
When an incredibly rare native tree – the Bartlett’s rātā – flowered for the first time in a quarter-century, Botany curator Carlos Lehnebach was ready with his tweezers. Bartlett’s rātā is one of the most threatened trees in New Zealand. It’s also one of our rarest species, with only 13Read more
Until 2016, flax weevils (large flightless protected beetles) were known from a single island in Fiordland. Recent surveys by Te Papa and Department of Conservation staff have now found evidence of them on a further 56 Fiordland islands. Here, Te Papa scientist Dr Colin Miskelly reports on the latest findings from remote southern Fiordland.Read more
Te Papa scientists Alan Tennyson and Colin Miskelly recently joined a Department of Conservation-led survey of seabird colonies in remote Chalky Inlet and Preservation Inlet in southern Fiordland. The team made the most of an extended spell of fine weather to land on an astonishing 77 islands. Colin Miskelly summarises some of their more notable discoveries.Read more
You don’t have to be in the wilderness to make biodiversity discoveries. One of our scientists, Lara Shepherd, recently made an exciting find whilst walking home from work.Read more
Fossilised bird grave sites are common in New Zealand, but one particular cave in Martinborough has revealed thousands of bones of flightless birds who plunged to their deaths.Read more
Curator Terrestrial Invertebrates Julia Kasper looks at the reproductive lives of our local mosquitoes.Read more
