Jacinta Kong

01/04/202114/07/2021

The socio-economic theory of animal abundance

Where do animals live and why? These are some of the questions that ecologists are interested in. Sure, we can talk about patterns of abundance in an area in terms of abiotic or biotic factors or niche variation. But what if there’s more to animals than that?

What if a young animal is concerned not just about eating, being eaten and living to reproduce but also with their finances, housing, commute and social mobility? What if a larger or older individual lives where they live not because they can outcompete smaller individuals for limited resources, but because they have accrued greater capital over time and thus have higher purchasing power?

None of these questions are answered by current ecological theory. We need an alternative explanation for animal distributions and abundances. Here, I present to you the socio-economic theory of animal abundance. I illustrate this theory using the Australian ghost crab (Ocypode cordimana) as a case study.

13/12/201913/12/2019

Home and Away: Australian expats

Natural history museum collections are invaluable snapshots of history. Research collections are snapshots of the animals and plants collected in history. Research collections are also a reflection of the people and attitudes at the time it was curated. There is a well-represented collection of native Australian animals in the Zoology Museum at Trinity College Dublin. Well-represented in many sense of the word. This is a story about the red land down under, Australia, and the collection of Australian animals held in overseas museums around the world. It is a story in parts. This is the third and final part.

Australian expats

The pride of the Zoology Museum is Ireland’s last Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis). As the Great Auk exemplifies, all you need to have a lecture room named after you is to be extinct. But this isn’t a story about extinct Irish birds.

There is a bird in the Museum labelled as a night parrot (Strigops habroptilus). As I’ve described in a previous story, the vernacular name for this specimen is kakapo (literally night parrot in Maori), an endemic New Zealand bird. Kakapos are great. They deserve a blog post to themselves, but this isn’t a story about New Zealand birds.

22/11/201922/11/2019

Home and Away: Monotreme mistakes

Natural history museum collections are invaluable snapshots of history. Research collections can be used to trace how animals have changed over time. Collections are also a reflection of the people and attitudes at the time it was curated. There is a well-represented collection of native Australian animals in the Zoology Museum at Trinity College Dublin. Well-represented in many sense of the word. This is a story about the red land down under, Australia, and the collection of Australian animals held in overseas museums around the world. It is a story in parts. This is the second part. Read the first part here.

Monotreme Mistakes

Echidnas (Tachyglossus aculeatus) are monotremes; Order Monotremata within Class Mammalia. They have hair and produce milk like other mammals but unlike other mammals, they lay eggs. Monotremes are endemic to Australia and New Guinea and consist of the four species of echidna and the platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus).

The echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus) in the Zoology Museum

01/11/201904/11/2019

Home and Away: Would a Rosella by any other name smell as sweet?

Natural history museum collections are invaluable snapshots of history. Research collections are snapshots of the animals and plants collected in history. Research collections are also a reflection of the people and attitudes at the time it was curated. There is a well-represented collection of native Australian animals in the Zoology Museum at Trinity College Dublin. Well-represented in many sense of the word. This is a story about the red land down under, Australia, the collection of Australian animals held in overseas museums around the world. It is a story in parts. This is the first part.

An eastern quoll, *Dasyurus viverrinus*, labelled as a native cat

Would a Rosella by any other name smell as sweet?[efn_note] Rosellas, an endemic Australian bird in the Order Psittaciformes, was named by European settlers after Rose Hill (now Paramatta), New South Wales[/efn_note]

This story traces its roots to the day that Europeans invaded Australia, but we will start with the Saturday the 26^th October 2019. For most of the world, Saturday was not a particularly notable day. It was the beginning of the Bank Holiday long weekend here in Ireland; I enjoyed a walkabout through the local park. But as the sun dawned on Uluru in the Northern Territories, Australia, it was the start of a historic day.