A project undertaken at Deakin University, and supervised by Dr Nick Porch
The mountains of southeastern Australia are an iconic landscape with a distinctive flora and fauna that has evolved in response to the relatively cool, wet, climate that characterises the region. The flora and the vertebrate fauna are well-known, but the nature and composition of the rich and unique invertebrate fauna is, relatively, much more poorly known.
The montane regions of southeastern Australia contain a mosaic of open habitats, like this herb-rich grassland at JB Plain, and distinctive snow gum forests.
This project seeks to better understand the patterns of distribution of species within selected invertebrate groups (like beetles, flies, true bugs and land hoppers, for example) and to discover which areas are especially important for invertebrate biodiversity in the Australian alps. To do this we will sample invertebrates from across the region using a combination of methods, that include pitfall traps, sampling leaf litter, Malaise traps to catch flying insects, and sweeping/beating vegetation to collect invertebrates that live on plants.
An undescribed species of dragon springtail (Italics’Acanthanura’Italics or a related genus) from the Mount Hotham area of Victoria recently photographed during fieldwork.
We will use traditional morphological approaches to identification, where possible, as well as genetic techniques to differentiate more difficult or very poorly understood groups like the dragon springtails (above). The result will be an enhanced understanding of the diversity and distribution of montane invertebrates that allows assessment of how this diversity changes across the region in response to characteristics of the local environment like topography and climate.
