Transcript
MICHELLE STANLEY: A new report has shown about 9,000 species of invertebrates in Australia have gone extinct and we could lose another species or even two this week alone. John Woinarski is a professor of conservation biology with Charles Darwin University. Good morning Professor John Woinarski. Firstly, what is an invertebrate?
PROFESSOR JOHN WOINARSKI: Invertebrates are a whole suite of animals without backbones. So they include insects, beetles, bees, ants but also spiders, slugs, snails, centipedes, scorpions, millipedes, a whole range of tiny creepy crawlies – a rich part of our biodiversity in Australia.
MICHELLE STANLEY: Yeah plenty the things you find in the backyard in Australia or sometimes on the wall in the bedroom as well. But how has the insect population being changing in Australia?
PROFESSOR JOHN WOINARSKI: Yeah there’s reasonable evidence that the whole lot of species declining and some have gone and become extinct. It’s very hard to actually be certain or precise about the actual numbers because we know so little about Australia. We don’t really know how many species there are. We don’t really know where they are what the names are and how they are fairing. The best guess is between 300,000 and a million invertebrate species in Australia of which only a third is named.
MICHELLE STANLEY: Wow. So why is there this gap of knowledge?
PROFESSOR JOHN WOINARSKI: The obvious that we like the charismatic mammals and birds – the koalas and wallabies and parrots and the like and we neglect and even disdain the invertebrate component of our biodiversity. So there’s not much resources being put into understanding about invertebrates and it’s not many resources being put into their conservation.
MICHELLE STANLEY: There seems to be a bit of love on the text line today for the sound of cicadas on a summer’s day and that kind of idea of invertebrates in some sense that’s a romantic view but you’re very right it’s a different view if you said would you rather go to Australia and see a redback spider or a koala. I think kind of a lot more people would be happy to support but how do we know . . .
PROFESSOR JOHN WOINARSKI: There’s beauty in some of our invertebrates. They’re marvelous creatures. They’re really wonderful. They do intriguing things and have strange lifestyles. They’re fascinating creatures once you take the punt and get to know them and find out about them.
MICHELLE STANLEY: Do you have a favorite?
PROFESSOR JOHN WOINARSKI: I don’t mind the Emperor gum moth which is a large moth restricted to mostly eastern Australia but I raised them as a boy from caterpillars and they were just fascinating
MICHELLE STANLEY: I’ve just quickly searched online and they’re quite fuzzy aren’t they and they’ve got these beautiful light colour. They’re very stunning to look at. What is it in particular that you like about the Emperor gum moth?
PROFESSOR JOHN WOINARSKI: It’s the transformation they do from really strange looking caterpillars to cocoons and then coming out of the cocoons as a totally different a moth that flying around Invertebrates do wonderful things. They’re just fascinating on this in the right of you can see if environments and contributing to that environment.
MICHELLE STANLEY: Yeah how do they contribute to the environment?
PROFESSOR JOHN WOINARSKI: We’re all dependent upon the bugs around us. They do all sorts of things. They purify water. They pollinates native wildflowers and trees and crops and they form the resource from which most of the larger vertebrates depend on – the resources and they do that they fertilized soils and turn over Soils they make up country more productive more resilience and more beautiful.
MICHELLE STANLEY: I know we talk a lot about the bees but I’ve also heard that flies and ants are so importantly in the pollination of our food as well.
PROFESSOR JOHN WOINARSKI: Yeah we’d be nowhere without the invertebrates it’s just impossible to do the scale other than from the use of invertebrates these so we’d starve quickly in Australia within purpose to crash even further than they have done today.
MICHELLE STANLEY: 11 to 11 on 728c radio Perth and you’re hearing from John Woinarski when asked he is a professor of conservation biology with Charles Darwin University and we’re talking about this study of invertebrates 9,000 species of invertebrates have gone extinct in Australian and we could lose another species this week . . . but how do we know that they’re disappearing?
PROFESSOR JOHN WOINARSKI: Oh, we know from all sorts of relatively ad hoc monitoring programs about the trends and trajectories of population for many species but by no means the majority of invertebrate species. One example is on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean there’s really good survey done of all the invertebrates when the island was opened up for colonization in the 1890s and there were 50 species of invertebrates described at that time from the island that occurred only on that Island and most of those haven’t seen so there are some sort of benchmark studies that from which we can distill the information that species have gone missing but also things like Christmas Beetles is really obvious ones that most people know of. Our grandfathers and grandmothers knew them to be far more abundant than the case now. We’re losing species even the most conspicuous of our invertebrates at a rate which appears to be unsustainable
MICHELLE STANLEY: And is that rate increasing?
PROFESSOR JOHN WOINARSKI: Yeah we think so. Climate change is ratcheting up a whole lot of the threats. everything so climate change is actually a lot of the threats that are already so the fire regimes are becoming more serious that will be coming increasingly intense frequency severe and the number of hot days is going to escalate as well. Rainfall will reduce. This will change all the environments on which insects depend things that we must worry about have tiny ranges and many of them are reluctant species that have been dependent on wetter . . .Australia for millions of years views and that dependent on wetter conditions that is likely to be the case in the future
MICHELLE STANLEY: Sarah has been in touch on 0437922 double 2720 she says oh my goodness such a great topic I just finished an assignment for uni about the importance of conservation of invertebrates in agriculture especially viticulture and how little is actually known and so is there anything that we can do at home or on the farm to stop the growing rate of extinction of invertebrates?
PROFESSOR JOHN WOINARSKI: It’s like all conservation. Everybody can contribute. We can plant more natives in our gardens and that will help the balance between native invertebrates and non native invertebrates. We can use in sector science fellas the moment. We can learn about the living things around us and put names to them; by books that go online to figure out what species of what we can watch take time and quietly watch some of these species in marvel at how fascinating they are. We can all doour bit to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions and to prevent climate change.
MICHELLE STANLEY: And the Emperor gum moth you mentioned is your favorite invertebrate. Where might people find that is that something we could find in backyards in WA?
PROFESSOR JOHN WOINARSKI: I’m living in Melbourne at the moment so I hesitate to admit that I’m not sure they are in WA but there’s beautiful butterflies obviously and beetles in Perth and we should all care about if you want to have a different favourite insect.
MICHELLE STANLEY: that Robin has said I’ve not seen Huntsman or a Christmas spider in my backyard for so many years it’s so sad. Thank you, Robin, for that text. I live in northern WA and we don’t really get Huntsmans we get plenty of other spiders and things like that but yeah Huntsman’s I wonder whether anyone noticed fewer of those creeping about the place? Professor John will ask you great to catch up this morning thanks for your Insights.
PROFESSOR JOHN WOINARSKI: Yeah, great thanks to talk to. Bye.
MICHELLE STANLEY: He’s the Professor of conservation biology at Charles Darwin University talking about the extinction of invertebrates in Australian 9,000 species have thought to have gone extinct in Australia and we could lose another species this week.