Submitted a paper this week to Arctic Science proposing a new way to index collared lemming abundance in the polar desert. The method uses the urine marks lemmings naturally leave on plastic cards placed in their habitat for 48 hours. I call it the pee-card method! 🧪🌿🌎🦊 #wildlife #Arctic #North

Nice chorus of Endangered Sloane’s froglets (and a few other species) at CSU’s David Mitchell wetlands yesterday afternoon. The Thurgoona campus is a hotspot for them #wildoz #threatenedspecies #wetlands @gulbali-institute.bsky.social

In2016, conservation biologist @jodirowley.bsky.social embarked on a mission into some of the most rugged terrain in Australia, the Northern Tablelands of NSW, to find a tiny rare frog, which hadn’t been seen in over 40 years. But what she found was unexpected: cosmosmagazine.com/magazine/fin...

Jodi's adventure of rediscovery is one of many precarious, hilarious and thought-provoking stories from the front line of ecology fieldwork included in our book, Wild Science, edited by @hpwaudby.bsky.social. Find it in bookshops or online: www.publish.csiro.au/book/8128/

Amazing image of one of Australia’s unique and Critically Endangered bird species. So good to see them breeding! This kind of sighting would be a once in a lifetime experience for many people. David has been working on the species for over 20 years now.

Ever had that feeling of being watched..? Reminded when I looked up from frog surveys to find I was the one being surveyed. By a southern bell frog. Creep.

Wonderful discovery by one of my colleagues. Really demonstrates the critical importance of repeated surveys in threatened species conservation and planning.

Massive rainbow after a storm at Nanya Station in south west NSW. Couldn’t help but smile.

Some solid rainfall in NSW’s south west mallee last week. Enough to encourage burrowing frogs to make their way to the surface. Lots of these little Sudell’s frogs out looking for a mate #wildoz #frogs #desertrain #Neobatrachus

Hot off the press! One of former PhD student and now Dr Ange Pestell's thesis chapters esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... Continued cross-disciplinary collaboration is needed to ensure large environmental datasets are available to train & test machine learning algorithms.

End salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour now. As hundreds of thousands of salmon are dying, the PM is throwing public money at the polluting, tax-avoiding foreign corporations, putting them over Australia's people and wildlife. It has to stop. Add your name: theaus.in/save_the_skate

It’s been a quiet week of fauna monitoring in far south west NSW. This young knob-tailed gecko (Nephrurus levis) was a highlight. Adults can get up to ~10 cm. This one was around 5. Those eyes… #WildOz

Pie-dish beetles (Helea spp.) are so cool. They use their exaggerated flanges a bit like a shield to fend off predators. We see lots of them in the mallee #Coleoptera #WildOz

The mallee of south west NSW is a magic place at twilight. Heat still radiating off the sand. Birds winding down for the day.

Common brown butterfly (Heteronympha merope) on this morning’s walk. Fluttering its last as it lay on the path. Typically lots around Albury at this time of year.

Get ready for goosebumps, this is my FAVOURITE moment from the 2024 @marinemammalogy.bsky.social conference held in Perth, Western Australia. #whale

Christmas Bells right on cue in Royal National Park . . .

This beautiful, tiny cuckoo wasp (~8mm) has been loitering around my insect hotel, waiting for a suitable wasp to lay an egg. Once laid, she will then lay hers, which will hatch first and eat all the food left for the other wasp. #wasps #insects #nature #backyardbiodiversity #kleptoparasitism

And this cracker by Helen Waudby @euanritchie.bsky.social @manusaunders.bsky.social et al.

Tiny wildflowers still waving their heads above the drying grasslands of the NSW Riverina. Bindweed, mallee fringe-lily & yellow rush lilies.

Buy @hpwaudby.bsky.social’s book, it’s full of cracking yarns www.publish.csiro.au/book/8128/?f...

Whoa! I'm feeling very satisfied, accomplished and just so deeply rewarded by this simple reality. The proof has arrived and it's everything I hoped it would be. I had next to no sleep last night but as of tomorrow I will be doing a final edit and then, it will be on sale. #birds #birding

Great to be back out in the field after 7 months of parental leave. Listening to the water birds fussing about and bell frogs calling at Gayini on twilight was a bit magic…

Got my copy! Thanks @hpwaudby.bsky.social for inviting me to be part of this awesome collection of stories highlighting the diversity of experiences working with nature. Hope this book inspires more readers to explore ecology and conservation opportunities! 🌏 publish.csiro.au/book/8128/

Desert heath-myrtle, Baeckea crassifolia (south west of Alice Springs, NT) #wildflowers

Anurophagy is fairly common in larger frog species like the southern bell frog. It’s always fascinating to observe during monitoring #wildoz

A few days in the mallee of south west NSW

Checking nest boxes I set up to try and entice western pygmy possums living in the mallee in far south-west New South Wales. No actual possum yet (75 more boxes to go), but did find a promising little leaf nest in one #wildoz

In defense of NATURAL HISTORY, a discipline in danger "We are all interested in understanding the natural world, but we often fall into the habit of abstracting our research away from its natural contexts & complexities" @KNanglu 🧪🌍 #evolution biodiversity onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Just accepted in Australian Journal of Zoology, our paper on Aprasia inaurita

Chariot wheels (Maireana cheelii) are a federally listed threatened species. Pretty cool to see how ants collect the fruit and leave it lying around the entrance to their nest. I was told that it’s often the first tip off to the species’ presence!

Did you know that cities are great places for nature conservation? In fact, sometimes they’re *necessary*. Our research found 39 threatened species that ONLY occur in Australia’s urban environments. So we better get better at sharing cities with nature theconversation.com/the-39-endange…

I’m new to #BlueSky - aiming to continue my scicom about dingoes, dogs and hybridisation. A few months ago I published the results of a 6+ year study updating DNA methods for dingo ancestry testing. Surprisingly we found hybridization was uncommon in Australia! theconversation.com/new-dna-test...

Just gave my annual lecture to Federation University students doing their Arid Zone Ecology course. Really engaged bunch of students with insightful questions. Keeps me hopeful.