The numbat is one of the Tasmanian tiger’s closest surviving relatives. And its newly sequenced genome raises the possibility of piecing together the genetic code of its extinct fellow marsupial.
When a plant is stressed, it mobilises its resources and often converts its starch reserves back to sugar. As soon as this happens, the stressed plant becomes sweeter than its healthier neighbours.
Spiny-tailed skinks, also known as meelyu, are culturally significant to the Badimia people in Western Australia. But habitat degradation and mining have put them at threat of extinction.
Once thought to occur only in birds and mammals in the Northern Hemisphere, due to the more pronounced winters, we now know torpor is widespread in small Australian mammals.
Tooth fossils from NSW have confirmed sauropods weren’t exclusive to Queensland. They’re also providing a first look at how these colossal dinosaurs fed from Australia’s land.
The invasive species was likely brought to Australia unintentionally by ship. Now found in every state and territory, the wasps are decimating our ecosystems.
Paul Weston, Charles Sturt University and Theo Evans, The University of Western Australia
Wet and bulky cattle dung is very unlike marsupial dung that Australian dung beetles are adapted to deal with, meaning native dung beetles tend to leave it alone. But help from abroad is at hand.
The main food for the mountain pygmy-possum’s spring/summer breeding season is the migratory bogong moth, but in 2017 and 2018 billions of bogong moths failed to arrive. Then the bushfires did.
Just another of Australia’s creepy crawlies… but will it kill you?
Flickr/
Australia’s snakes, spiders and other venomous critters tend to strike fear in many people. But is Australia’s reputation as a nation of deadly creatures deserved?
Western galahs in flight.
Shutterstock/Andrea Izzotti
When is a galah not a galah? That depends on which scientific name is attached to the Australian bird. There’s been some confusion over this, which DNA testing has finally solved.
Some of the many species in the Australian National Insect Collection.
CSIRO/Alan Landford
At least 100,000 insects are among the many Australian species still to be formally identified. That’s a problem for any biosecurity experts who need to be able to spot potentially invasive bugs.