Blog archive:
AMRI

Scientists from AMRI, University of Sydney, University of Edinburgh and CSIRO conducted the first comprehensive genetic assessment of the red-tailed black-cockatoo across its entire distribution. The result is a new subspecies!

Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding provides a new tool to monitor biodiversity in our oceans but the greatest challenge that it faces is a lack of DNA barcode reference libraries. Natural history museums are best placed to come to the rescue in the near future.

Dr Penny Berents and Amanda Hay recently embarked on a Coral Sea Voyage through the Coral Marine Park. Read more about their discoveries aboard the Iron Joy!

Genetic remote-sensing tools, such as environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding, provide new opportunities for scientists to locate endangered and/or elusive marine fauna, and to set new biodiversity baselines on increasingly vulnerable coral reefs.

During this holiday season, we thought that you may like to know more about Australia’s answer to the beloved ‘Easter bunny’… the Easter Bilby!

The variation in size, colour and shape of bird eggs is part of what makes them so fascinating! This variety reflects the diversity of Australia’s birdlife.

Introduced rats and chickens on Norfolk Island love to eat native animals as snacks, and were thought to have wiped out the endemic Campbell’s Keeled Glass Snail … until we recently found a few individuals alive.

A strange beetle larva was brought to the Australian Museum. It turned out to be only the third collection of its family in Australia and a new species!

For the past few years several lakes in NSW have been subjected to a seasonal influx in Cassiopea population. Usually at home in far warmer waters, this tropical jellyfish has migrated south to live all year round.

Museum collections provide a treasure trove of undiscovered species, and in this case the newly discovered and beautiful Bloody Perchlet, Plectranthias cruentus, was a jigsaw puzzle put together from old and new.

A new study that uses DNA metabarcoding on cryptic red snapper species (family Lutjanidae), has provided new insights into their diet strategies and adaptations required for their coexistence.

A new, DNA-based frog survey technique means bloodsucking insects can help scientists find and conserve threatened frog species.

Taxonomists strive to bring order to the chaos we call the diversity of life by naming species and sorting them into higher taxa, like genera and families. Needless to say that this undertaking comes with its own problems.

Could the introduced Cane Toad be partly to blame for mid-size mammal declines in northern Australia?

The application of DNA barcoding by AM researchers has been used to unravel the species complex of Heterolepisma sclerophyllum, as well as to investigate silverfish phylogenies in the remote islands off Eastern Australia