Jon SullivanMar 19

Earlier this week I had the good fortune to help #LincolnUniversityNZ ecology Masters student Heidi Allan with her field work.

Heidi's got an ambitious big-scale discovery project going, looking at the beetle communities in native NZ beech forest canopies all the way from Kaikoura on the east coast to Punakaiki on the west coast, and from the lowlands up into the Southern Alps.

The beetle community in NZ's beech canopies is largely unexplored, and has never been sampled at anything close to this scale before. Heidi's bound to find lots of new things. She'll also greatly increase our knowledge of how this community is affected by climate.

Here are some photos from our trip. Along with Heidi are John Marris, the curator of our university entomology museum, and our university's herpetologist (and lover of creepy crawlies) Jennifer Gillette.

#fieldwork #ecology #nz #entomology

Show threadJon SullivanMar 19

One of the extra challenges, when setting up a make-shift science desk on the forest floor on the West Coast of NZ's South Island, is stopping the curious local weka from pecking at or running off with your equipment.

We had to be constantly vigilant while Heidi was working.

😄

#birds #nz #weka

Show threadFrosty
Terrifying! All I have to worry about are bears and cougars and moose. ;)

(so cool to see your world and realize we share the same planet)
Mar 20 at 1:01amWeb
Show threadJon SullivanMar 20
@Frost_Farm 😄 Yes, I guess bears and cougars and moose are terrifying in other ways, but they aren't going to sneak up and steal your stuff like a weka will.