Northern Territory insect collection opens doors to citizen scientists to share knowledge, deepen ties around biosecurity

ABC NEWS (Australia)

One small group of field naturalists have been given a glimpse behind usually closed doors at the Northern Territory's most significant library of insects.

Transcript

00:00In the early 1980s, Dr Brian Thistleton was researching fruit flies in Papua New Guinea,

00:09when a new species was named in his honour.

00:11It was called Thistletonia, it was found from Mount Hagen in Papua New Guinea, but it's

00:15since been found in Indonesia.

00:17Forty years on, he's the custodian of this important archive in Darwin, the Northern

00:22Territory's official insect collection, an entomological database of 56,000 specimens

00:28stretching back more than half a century.

00:30Every single record in that collection, in that big broad database, is verified by a

00:36specimen on a pin or on a slide or in alcohol.

00:41Today the doors to the collection have been opened to the NT Field Naturalists Club, a

00:46community of aspiring entomologists and citizen scientists.

00:51We learn to identify insects or pick things up that we might not usually see and then

00:57say, hey we found this really interesting bug and maybe that bug will be a new species

01:01or maybe it will be an invasive species.

01:03For many of us here, we're in paradise seeing an insect collection like that, it's just

01:08fantastic.

01:09That's what's called aphid somatic colouration or warning colouration.

01:13With an online membership of nearly 18,000, the club isn't just a community of hobbyists,

01:18they're an informed surveillance network in the fight against biosecurity threats.

01:23We monitor their Facebook page because they're always putting pictures up of new things they've

01:27found.

01:29Some of them are quite expert.

01:32It's very interesting, you can see all of the different things that are going on in

01:37the Northern Territory and just all the people sharing all the different types of insects.

01:43A cross-pollination between experts and enthusiasts.

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