Nic Rawlence • Mar 19, 2018 •
It’s the height of the Central Otago summer – barren, dry and dusty. Driving down the gravel road to St Bathans, we’re travelling back in time, down the rabbit hole to a world long gone. Only ghosts remain of this lost world and that’s what we’ve come here to find. The fossilised bones of a myriad of animals dating back … Read More
Helen Taylor • May 09, 2017 •
Most research on de-extinction focuses on the technology behind making it happen. It’s refreshing to see a group of conservation scientists examining what happens when you release these species into the wild. What comes after de-extinction? The latest issue of the journal Functional Ecology has a special feature on de-extinction. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you won’t have … Read More
Guest Work • May 09, 2017 •
If we are going to resurrect an extinct species, where will it live and what will it eat? Sciblogs is running a series of posts on de-extinction to coincide with a special issue of the journal Functional Ecology focusing on the topic. In this guest post, special issue author Dr Jamie Wood from Landcare Research looks to the past to find answers … Read More
Jamie Steer • Apr 13, 2017 •
Dr Jamie Steer ponders whether the ‘deer are like moa’ debate has passed its use-by date. This is the second and concluding part of the series – read part one here. Critics stuck in the past I reckon that critics of the ‘deer are like moa’ position often misinterpret it. Deer advocates have never claimed that deer are the … Read More
Jamie Steer • Apr 12, 2017 •
In this two-part series, Dr Jamie Steer ponders whether the ‘deer are like moa’ debate has passed its use-by date. Writing on the impacts of introduced deer in the Transactions of the New Zealand Institute in 1892, the Reverend P. Walsh argued that New Zealand’s native forests were poorly equipped to deal with grazing mammals. Taking the pre-human forest as … Read More
John Kerr • Feb 28, 2017 •
Adding previously-extinct species to our conservation checklist will strain already tight conservation budgets, say a team of New Zealand and Australian scientists. Little Bush Moa, Anomalopteryx didiformis. © Te Papa. De-extinction – resurrecting extinct species with the help of modern technology – has been largely confined to the realms of sci-fi. But now technology is catching up with the fantasy. Read More
Guest Work • Jan 14, 2016 •
Trevor Worthy, Flinders University Australia is renowned for once being home to a group of gigantic birds known as the mihirungs. These birds are distantly related to waterfowl and included the impressive Dromornis stirtoni, the largest bird ever known on the planet at about 450kg in weight. An artist’s impression of Genyornis newtoni. Anne Musser, Australian Museum … Read More
Sarah-Jane O'Connor • Jan 13, 2016 •
Extinct moa co-existed in pre-human New Zealand because they had a diverse range of diets and feeding strategies, New Zealand and Australian researchers have found. New research, published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, London, combining CT and MRI scans and software used after the Canterbury earthquakes has detailed the likely diet and feeding strategy of five of … Read More
Lynley Hargreaves • Sep 24, 2014 •
Dr Priscilla Wehi As a zoologist living within a Māori community, Dr Priscilla Wehi became interested in the ecological information contained in Māori oral tradition. When she discovered a potentially new approach to exploring ecology by dating ancestral sayings, or whakataukī, she and Hēmi Whaanga at the University of Waikato developed a group. Their work on whakataukī has created … Read More
Eric Crampton • Oct 15, 2012 •
I love Amihai Glazer's little model claiming that voters are motivated by the desire to anger or please others through their vote. The model explains a few anomalies that are otherwise hard to explain, like that voters pay more attention to national el... Read More