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#LincolnUniversityNZ

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It's always a treat to find earthstars and today was the first time I'd found some on the campus of #LincolnUniversityNZ where I work.

They come out of the ground like little brown flowers and their central balls puff out spores when the rain hits them. And, then, they're gone again.

inaturalist.nz/observations/30

iNaturalist NZEarthstars (Genus Geastrum)Earthstars from Lincoln, New Zealand on August 14, 2025 at 03:07 PM by Jon Sullivan
#fungi#Geastrum#nz

A female korimako (NZ bellbird) has been spotted at #LincolnUniversityNZ! These photos were taken on our campus on Tuesday by student William Harland. I checked on #iNaturalistNZ and, of the 153 korimako observations from Lincoln town and surrounds, this is the only the second female bird seen in Lincoln, and the first on the university campus. The other bird was seen in 2023.

All the korimako I see on campus, and all the others that have been photographed closely enough to tell on iNat, have all been males. They tend to spread out from the Port Hills outside of breeding season, and disappear from Lincoln in the Spring and Summer and head back to the hills.

If females are now down here exploring, there's a chance they'll pair up with males and breed in Lincoln, which would be exciting.

(Female korimako have the elegant pale cheek stripe that males lack.)

inaturalist.nz/observations/30

iNaturalist NZMainland New Zealand Bellbird (Subspecies Anthornis melanura melanura)Mainland New Zealand Bellbird from Lincoln, New Zealand on August 5, 2025 at 01:17 PM by William Harland. Apparently female bellbirds are rarely seen on the LU campus, so a nice find on my part!
#birds#nz#Lincoln

Frogs! So many frogs!

Our field ecology course at #LincolnUniversityNZ was up in the Southern Alps mountains of Boyle, North Canterbury, NZ, this weekend. Despite the winter cold, hundreds of whistling frogs were noisily calling at night from a nearby pond. We went to check them out on a night walk.

These are an Australian frog species, Litoria ewingii, introduced on purpose to NZ 1875. I just read on Wikipedia that they're known to be able to survive freezing in the winter, which will explain how they've managed to thrive in NZ's Southern Alps.

None of NZ's three native frogs remain in Canterbury (eaten out by introduced rats and mice), so having an Australian frog here isn't so bad.

Click on the iNat link to hear their chorus of calling.

inaturalist.nz/observations/30

Today I was teaching a lecture about environmental weeds, for our Applied Ecology and Conservation course at #LincolnUniversityNZ. I showed the class the "Environmental weeds in New Zealand" project on #iNaturalist. That was made by staff at the #DepartmentofConservation to gather observations of DOC's 386 weed species.

These are the plants that DOC has assessed as being fully naturalised wild exotics, already present in natural ecosystems, and likely to be having more than minor impacts on NZ ecosystems. iNat currently has 199,588 observations of 379 of these species.

On a whim, in class I decided to see how many of these environmental weeds were present on the university campus.

Was it 10? Maybe 20?

No, 109 species.

Like a lot of urban and rural areas in NZ, our campus is a reservoir of weeds.

inaturalist.nz/projects/enviro

inaturalist.nz/observations?pl

Here are a couple of the invertebrate finds from our three-day field trip into the mountains this weekend with our Field Ecology Methods course at #LincolnUniversityNZ

The weevil somehow ended up in the hair of student Emilie while she was walking through the Boyle beech forest. She put it in a vial and brought it back to the lodge for photographing. It's the NZ endemic weevil Eurynotia enysi and this is the 16th record on #iNaturalist and the species isn't even on GBIF.

inaturalist.nz/observations/30

The springtail was found under a log in beech forest by staff member Jennifer Gillette. We were looking for giant springtails and instead found this wee cutie. @frankashwood helped us to identify it on #iNaturalistNZ as genus Platanurida, one of the Short-legged Springtails. This is the 20th observation of this genus on iNat globally (there are 2 records on GBIF).

inaturalist.nz/observations/30

So little is known about most NZ invertebrates that making useful finds like this is easy. We need more people with macro attachments for their phones out exploring NZ's mountains.

#nature#nz#insects

This weekend I've been up at the Boyle River Outdoor Education Centre helping to teach our field ecology methods course at #LincolnUniversityNZ.

That's our second-year undergraduate ecology course that gives students practical experience with a lot of common ecology field methods, and teaches them the background on how and when to use them.

Here's one of our students, Kate, demonstrating the difficult skill of photographing a kakaruai (South Island robin).

Some ecology methods are harder than others. 😄

#birds#nz#ecology

Yesterday afternoon I was at the #ChristchurchBotanicGardens, with an undergrad student at #LincolnUniversityNZ who will be interning at the garden during the next teaching semester. Luke Martin, the curator of the native section of the garden, gave us a fascinating tour behind the scenes of the garden's native nursery, seed bank, and herbarium.

A lot of work is being done at the Gardens to learn about and safeguard Aotearoa New Zealand's botanical taonga. New natural history knowledge is being figured out about Canterbury's most threatened native plants so they can be kept safe in the seed bank and glasshouses, in case some of the Department of Conservation's valiant efforts in the wild fail.

Some of Canterbury's most threatened plant species only exist in the wild in patches of a few square metres in remnant vegetation on private farmland. The work Luke and colleagues are doing may prove exceptionally important for the survival of some of these species.

There's a lot more to the botanic gardens than a place to see pretty flowers.

We don't teach an art degree at #LincolnUniversityNZ, Te Whare Wānaka o Aoraki, but we're filled with art. We're a smaller university that specialises on land management (agriculture, landscape architecture, environmental policy and planning, conservation and ecology, etc.). Still, one of the nice things about working here is that art is everywhere.

Since the 1970s, we've built up a significant collection of over 300 artworks by artists from Aotearoa New Zealand and around the world. They're on display in classrooms and hallways and as sculptures in the gardens.

Just outside my office is this terrific sculpture of tunariki (baby eels) by Bing Dawe.

ltl.lincoln.ac.nz/tools-and-da

#university#nz#art
Continued thread

I used this paper as one of the options this year in the final assessment in my 200-level Biological Diversity undergraduate science class at #LincolnUniversityNZ. I've spent most of today reading students' thoughts on this paper and its implications for NZ conservation. It's been an interesting day.

Replied in thread

@aligorith How far away is the nearest adult female kahikatea? The podocarps get moved above by birds but almost all seedlings are within 100 m from their parents.

This all reminds me of Brendan Doody’s Master’s thesis at #LincolnUniversityNZ over 15 years ago now, where he looked at the neighbourhood around Riccarton Bush in Christchurch. Riccarton Bush is an old growth kahikatea fragment. In general, the local residents Brendan surveyed were strongly supportive of the bush but hardly any (2%) could identify kahikatea seedlings and people were weeding them out from their gardens.

wildcounts.org/blog/2014/01/15

WildCounts · A kahikatea in the head is worth two in the bushMake the wild count by adding consistency to your nature watching.

It’s not every week that #RNZ has a story about spider genitalia. This is such a week. Kate Curtis, a current PhD student at #LincolnUniversityNZ, has been hard at work figuring out all of the jumping spiders we have in Aotearoa-NZ. There’s estimated to be about 200 (most of them) that need scientific names. Figuring out which is which requires careful microscope work looking at spider genitalia. Along the way Kate’s finding new species.

rnz.co.nz/news/national/560268

RNZ · Native jumping spider found in restored Rotorua forestBy Tess Brunton
#nz#nature#spiders

Today my Biological Diversity class at #LincolnUniversityNZ toured the Allan Herbarium at #ManaakiWhenua. It is NZ's largest pressed plant collection, a treasure trove of hundreds of thousands of botanical marvels.

Botanist Sue Gibb talked about how the herbarium works and showed us some amazing plants, including type specimens used to describe new species, extinct plants and first collections of new weeds, and some of the plants collected on Captain Cook's voyages.

Introducing the New Zealand Bush Boba!

We found this pretty orange fungus last week during our survey of Mount Grand Station near Lake Hāwea, as part of the #LincolnUniversityNZ Masters-level Conservation Biology course.

The fungus is in the genus Heterotextus (thanks to Jerry Cooper on #iNaturalist for the ID). It doesn't seem to have had a common name, at least not until now. The students have declared it NZ Bush Boba, and I reckon that's good.

inaturalist.nz/observations/27

I'm at Lake Hāwea this week helping teach a field trip for our Masters level Conservation Biology course at #LincolnUniversityNZ. The surprise find so far has been the lizard team's discovery of redback spiders on the university's Mount Grand high country station.

These are Australian venomous spiders related to black widows and NZ's katipō. Redbacks have been established around Cromwell and Alexandra and are spreading.

inaturalist.nz/observations/26

iNaturalist NZRedback Spider (Latrodectus hasselti)Redback Spider from Lake Hāwea 9382, New Zealand on April 8, 2025 at 01:18 PM by Jennifer Gillette. Adult female
Continued thread

#BiologicalInvasions expert Prof. Franz Essl from Austria gave a seminar today at #LincolnUniversityNZ. He showed a study of the global distribution of slugs and snails. Natives show distinct biogeographic regions. Australasian snails were different from African snails which were different from South American snails. Yet, naturalised snails (moved around the world by people) were just temperate and tropical. We are dramatically simplifying the natural world by moving species about. #molluscs

Yesterday I saw my 2nd "common" ectemnius, on a roadside near Lincoln, #NZ. This wasp is from Europe, Asia, & North America. It was first found in the southern hemisphere in Feb 2020 in Christchurch by Hannah Nolan, for her undergrad entomology collection at #LincolnUniversityNZ. It triggered a biosecurity response, and she passed the course.

There have now been 30 observations, all in and around Christchurch, as it slowly expands.

inaturalist.nz/observations/26

iNaturalist NZCommon Ectemnius (Ectemnius continuus)Common Ectemnius from Lincoln, New Zealand on March 25, 2025 at 01:52 PM by Jon Sullivan

A couple of exciting nature observations from #LincolnUniversityNZ today:

A korimako-NZ bellbird was back singing. They leave campus to breed in the hills over summer. A few come back and spend autumn and winter on campus. Welcome back!

Also, two students saw copper butterflies! Only one had been seen before on campus, back in 2021. We have host plants planted now so we hope they'll stay.

inaturalist.nz/observations/26
inaturalist.nz/observations/26
inaturalist.nz/observations/26

iNaturalist NZwinter copper (Lycaena 'canterbury common copper')winter copper from Lincoln 7608, New Zealand on March 10, 2025 at 12:04 PM by William Harland. Possibly the first time I have seen a copper butterfly at Lincoln University! Photos taken with ...