Beetling About: What I did on my holidays
We did find a cute new species of leaf beetle, pretending to be an acacia flower and no doubt there will be many more new things!
‘What I did on my holidays’ was the frequent title of essays required by our school teachers. I’ve just been on a field trip to a relatively remote part of New South Wales, a trip which was like a holiday from ghastly old Sydney. So here’s my essay.
The Pilliga is a vast forest, 75x75km, between Coonabarabran and Narrabri. A major highway between those two towns cuts off the eastern third of it, so it’s not exactly remote, but off that road the country very quickly becomes just wild remote bush. We were lucky with timing – there had been good rain and the place was awash with flowers, providing carpets of blue (Dampiera), yellow (Senna) and white (Calytrix).
I was with a group of biologists invited by the Federal Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW – time they changed that mouthful) to survey this wilderness, because the area was relatively poorly known. We were camped at the Australian Wildlife Conservancy field station, with most ‘mod cons’ provided, but the temperature did get down to 3.8°C, which is not so much fun in a tent.
Two of us from the Australian Museum were chasing beetles, including dung beetles. For the latter, Symbio Wildlife Park had very kindly provided some roo poo for baited traps.
What did we find? Well, it’s still being processed, but we brought back about 1000 beetle specimens from six days. The roo poo traps collected relatively little – five species, all widespread – perhaps because it was early in the year.
We did find a cute new species of leaf beetle, pretending to be an acacia flower (see above) and no doubt there will be many more new things!
I’m very grateful to Bushblitz (DCCEEW) for the invitation, to Cynthia Chan for the extra pair of eyes, and particularly to Symbio for the poo.
