Museums Victoria is an organisation which operates three major state-owned museums in Melbourne, Victoria: the Melbourne Museum, the Immigration Museum and Scienceworks Museum. It also manages the Royal Exhibition Building and a storage facility in Melbourne's City of Moreland.
Residential gardens provide significant opportunities for biodiversity conservation. They cover substantial portions of urban landscapes, and it is well-established that wildlife species respond to specific habitat characteristics of residential gardens such as vegetation structure. However, wildlife responses to the full suite of landscaping decisions comprising the intentional creation of a garden for wildlife are less well-understood. We compared habitat and bee community structure, and importance in a site-species landscape network, between residential gardens described by their owners as wildlife gardens, nearby residential gardens not intended for wildlife (control gardens), and nearby remnant vegetation in Melbourne, Australia. We found that vegetation diversity was higher in wildlife and control gardens compared to remnants, and the proportion of native vegetation was higher in wildlife gardens and remnants compared to control gardens. Bee diversity, but not abundance was higher in wildlife gardens and remnants compared to control gardens. Wildlife gardens and remnants had similar numbers but different suites of bee species, with wildlife gardens supporting more above ground- compared to below ground-nesting species, suggesting that each is missing key habitat elements. Landscape mosaics comprising both habitat types may therefore maximise bee diversity at the landscape scale. Analysis of the landscape network revealed that wildlife gardens and remnants supported more habitat specialist bee species (i.e. higher node strength) compared to control gardens and contributed more to network robustness. Residents that created wildlife gardens achieved their aims of supporting more wildlife compared to control gardens. They created small habitat patches that nonetheless complemented existing urban remnants, supported habitat specialists, and enhanced the robustness of the landscape network. Local governments can achieve biodiversity conservation goals at the landscape scale by supporting residents to create and maintain wildlife gardens.
The Lower Devonian Lilydale Limestone (Pragian) contains diverse invertebrate fossil faunas including Ostracoda. This contribution provides a taxonomic reassessment of these previously studied ostracod specimens. Twenty ostracod taxa are redescribed and illustrated Evlanella? sp.; Primitiella? sp.; Paraparchites uniumbonata; Paraparchites? sp.; Beyrichiopsis sp.; Bairdiocypris subtrigonalis; Bairdiocypris cf. subtrigonalis; Bairdiocypris sp. 1; Bairdiocypris sp. 2; Bairdiocypris sp. 3; Bairdiocypris sp. 4; Bairdiocypris? sp. 5; Microcheilinella s.l. lilydalensis; Microcheilinella s.l. semicultrata; Bairdia s.l. flexuosa; Bairdiacypris? halli; Bairdiacypris? sp.; Ampuloides? sp.; Gen. indet. 1; Gen. indet. 2; Gen. indet. 3. The problematic identity of some taxa relates to the internal mould state of preservation for all examined specimens.Tamara T.A. Camilleri* [tamara.camilleri@deakin.edu.au], Deakin University, School of Life and Environmental Sciences (Melbourne Campus), Victoria 3125, Australia. Museums Victoria, GPO Box 666, Melbourne, Victoria 3001, Australia; Elizabeth A. Weldon [l.weldon@deakin.edu.au], Deakin University, School of Life and Environmental Sciences (Melbourne Campus), Victoria 3125, Australia. Museums Victoria, GPO Box 666, Melbourne, Victoria 3001, Australia; Mark T. Warne [mark.warne@deakin.edu.au], Deakin University, School of Life and Environmental Sciences (Melbourne Campus), Victoria 3125, Australia. Museums Victoria, GPO Box 666, Melbourne, Victoria 3001, Australia; Rolf Schmidt [RSchmid@museum.vic.gov.au], Museums Victoria, GPO Box 666, Melbourne, Victoria 3001, Australia.
The recent discovery of the type specimen of Geocoris provisus Bergroth, 1895 (Hemiptera: Heteroptera: Geocoridae) has necessitated the following new subjective synonymy: Stylogeocoris provisus (Bergroth, 1895), comb. nov. = Stylogeocoris elongatus (Distant, 1901), syn. nov.Umbrageocoris malipatili Kóbor, 2022 is redescribed and illustrated, comparative notes are provided for Umbrageocoris Kóbor, 2019 and Geocoris Fallén, 1814 as well as for some species of these two genera from Australia. Stylogeocoris bicoloratus Malipatil, sp. nov. is described, and an updated key to the species of genus Stylogeocoris Montandon, 1913 is presented.
Axial elongation has evolved repeatedly in vertebrates, and previous research has revealed insights into the developmental and evolutionary mechanisms that shape this body plan. Snakes, with their elongated, functionally limbless bodies, offer an exceptional system to investigate how vertebral regions are organised or modified throughout elongation. Recent work suggests that snakes retain ancestral regionalisation and that heart position coincides with the boundary between two regions, but how methodological choices such as vertebral sampling density and landmark dimensionality affect the detectability of these regions remain untested. Here, we used three-dimensional geometric morphometrics (3D GM) and segmented linear regressions on complete vertebral columns from 12 elapid snakes to investigate regionalisation and interspecific differences. We compared multiple subsampling strategies (every vertebra, or sampling every 2%, 2.5%, 4% or 5%) to assess how resolution can influence the detection of regional boundaries. We also tested various landmarking schemes, examining if previously utilised landmarking schemes differ greatly in region detection. Our analyses reveal a 4- or 5-region model to be most suitable among elapids, including a short cervical region spanning 2%-4% of the column, a robust morphological shift at ~20% of the column aligning strongly with heart position and a distinct lumbar boundary in the final 5%. Interspecific shape differences were detected but lacked sufficient distinction to identify reliably. Fine-scale sampling improves the detection of small regions, decaying with coarser subsampling. Our results determined that the coarsest reliable sampling method was found at the 2.5% mark. These findings show that despite axial elongation, snakes retained a short cervical and lumbar region, with most of the elongation happening in the thoracic region. This, in turn, has resulted in the thoracic region undergoing axial repatterning, with three modules detected within the thoracic region. This study refines our understanding of vertebral modularity and highlights how regionalisation evolves in elongated vertebrates.
