Bennelongia has moved
Bennelongia has moved to 9 Bishop Street, Jolimont, just down the road.
Read More → 8th August 2023First blind daddy long-legs spiders from Australia and Réunion (Araneae, Pholcidae)
Huon Clark was involved in research on troglofaunal diversity and a new paper has been published that describes the first troglomorphic pholcids from Australia and Réunion. If you’d like to read more you can access the paper here.
Read More → 4th November 2022Stygofauna of ‘coastal plain’ areas of Australia and challenges to their persistence
A new paper has been published that Stuart Halse was involved in which researches stygofaunal diversity and ecological sustainability of coastal groundwater ecosystems in a changing climate. If you’d like to read more you can access the paper here.
Read More → 20th April 2022Towards evidence-based conservation of subterranean ecosystems
Another international collaboration in which Stuart Halse is involved in has just published a paper examining how much evidence there is that the conservation measures put in place to protect subterranean ecosystems are effective. If you’d like to read more the paper can be accessed here.
Read More → 20th April 2022The first true millipede!
Bennelongia has discovered the first “true” millipede! Eumillipes persephone was collected in the Goldfields of Western Australia and has an amazing 1306 legs – literally translating from the Latin mille (thousand) and pes (foot). Prior to this discovery the millipede recorded with the most legs had just 750. The finding was also significant as E. […]
Read More → 25th October 2021Recent multi-authored paper in Global Change Biology
A recent multi-authored paper in Global Change Biology reports the results of a wetland monitoring program that Bennelongia director Stuart Halse set up in 1997 when he was in DBCA. The startling conclusion is that aquatic invertebrate richness in wetlands of the Western Australian wheatbelt has declined by two-thirds over 13 years as a result […]
Read More → 11th October 2021A Hotspot of Arid Zone Subterranean Biodiversity
Last month both of Bennelongia’s principal scientists Huon Clark and Bruno Buzatto, along with our managing director Stuart Halse published “A Hotspot of Arid Zone Subterranean Biodiversity: The Robe Valley in Western Australia”. This paper discusses a globally significant subterranean fauna hotspot in the Robe Valley of the Pilbara region, Western Australia. In contrast to […]
Read More → 11th October 2021Trapped indoors? Long-distance dispersal in mygalomorph spiders.
Earlier this year one of Bennelongia’s Principal Scientists Bruno Buzatto published a paper investigating long-distance dispersal in mygalomorph spiders. Tarantulas, trapdoor and curtain-web spiders are known for poor dispersal abilities, but some species can disperse aerially, via dropping on drag lines from elevated positions and being passively blown off. Named ‘suspended ballooning’, this behaviour was […]
Read More → 8th January 2019What does sampling tell us about the ecology of troglofauna? (ISBC 2018)
The conference abstract is available online at https://doi.org/10.3897/aca.1.e29829 and a video will be forthcoming. Sampling for troglofauna has many inherent constraints and these include survey timing and design. Stuart Halse and his co-authors analysed sampling data from the Pilbara and found little evidence of weather or timing affecting capture rates. Importantly, there is evidence to […]
Read More → 8th January 2019Comparison of eDNA and traditional troglofauna sampling methods (ISBC 2018)
The conference abstract is available online – https://doi.org/10.3897/aca.1.e30282 and a video of Michael Curran‘s talk will be forthcoming. eDNA metabarcoding holds great promise for documenting the underground biota, but it currently faces significant challenges that will likely be met over the next decade. The troglofauna eDNA pilot study was unable to definitively confirm the presence […]
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