Research

Love is in the ocean not in the air this Valentine’s Day. Just ask this romantic heart-shaped sponge.

Heart-shaped sponge just below the surface at Flinders. And yes, that shape is the live animal, no Photoshop, just a quirky growth form.
Image: © John Gaskell

Imagine spending Valentine's Day dinner sifting through a mouthful of muddy silt. You're joined by several friends nearby to hug or hold hands with, but the only kiss on offer is from a fish that tries to eat you. And sex after dinner? Not tonight, unless you happen to be skilful enough to catch a comrade's passing sperm in the water. That's the life for many a sponge.

The photographer at the heart of the sponge image is John Gaskell. He’s a local diver, consultant and author of the popular local marine guide Beneath Our Bay. He also collaborates with Reef Watch to spread word on our interesting marine life. He caught this one at Flinders last week truly romancing the reef as it grows.

“Maybe the sponges are trying to tell us something,” Gaskell told Reef Watch, “reduce effluent or love our underwater reefs more”.

Keeping in the spirit of sponge love, Museum Victoria is producing Sponges, the next book in the science field guide series. Written by local expert Lisa Goudie, it celebrates not only sexual and asexual reproduction in sponges (Phylum Porifera), but also the diversity of species in Victorian waters and their amazing shapes and colours.

Diversity of shape and colour of sponges in Victorian waters.
Image: Mark Norman and Julian Finn  

The non-love sponge information:

Household sponges were once made of skeletal remains of true sponges from the ocean, although modern times replace the natural form with synthetic products. Not all sponges are soft; some are prickly, crumbly or slimy. Most species are marine, but a few live in freshwater. Sponges are not colonies of individual animals, but rather collections of cells that have specialised functions. Fossils indicate that this animal group has existed for at least 600 million years. They are some of the longest-lived animals in the world, with individuals of a tropical species being estimated at age of 2000 years. Other species are short lived and die back each year.

Links:

 Museum Victoria Science books 

 Sponges on the Port Phillip Bay Marine Life website

Kevin is our Senior Curator of Mammals. He investigates the systematics, evolution and conservation biology of mammals with a particular interest in rodents.

Greetings from Museum Zoologicum Bogoriense (the national zoological museum of Indonesia) in the Indonesian province of Jawa Barat (West Java). This week my colleagues and I are preparing for our expedition to the island of Sulawesi. As always, I am hosted by my friend and collaborator, Anang S. Achmadi, curator of mammals at MZB.

In addition to packing gear, I need to visit several government offices this week to obtain travelling permits. On Monday, I reported to the Indonesian office of research permits, RISTEK, in Jakarta.

Kevin C. Rowe (fifth from left) and Anang S. Achmadi (third from left) with the RISTEK team in their Jakarta office on Monday, 11 February.
Image: Jacob Esselstyn
Source: Museum Victoria  

RISTEK is my official sponsor while I am in Indonesia and they approved my proposed research prior to my departure from Melbourne. On Monday RISTEK provided letters of support to take to Imigrasi (Immigration), Polri (National Police), and Dalam Negeri (Ministry of Home Affairs). Each of these offices will provide documents to allow our travel in Indonesia on research activities.

Anang S. Achmadi reviews the permit procedures at the Polri office in Jakarta.
Image: Kevin Rowe
Source: Museum Victoria  

On Monday, we successfully submitted our paperwork at both Imigrasi and Polri (Polri PICS). This is my fourth trip to Indonesia for research and the improvement in efficiency over this time has been dramatic. Imigrasi and Polri have seen major renovations and the experience this year is remarkably stress free.

On Tuesday, I moved to Bogor (about an hour south of Java) to work at the museum with Anang while Imigrasi and Polri process my paperwork. Here Anang and I inventoried our gear and reviewed specimens to help us with identifications in the field.

Kevin in front of Museum Zoologicum Bogoriense.
Image: Kevin Rowe
Source: Museum Victoria

Kevin examines a specimen of the spiny, lowland Sulawesi shrew-rat, Echiothrix centrosa, collected in 1975 and held in the Museum Zoologicum Bogoriense collection. The species has hardly been seen since, and is a primary target for the expedition.
Image: Anang Achmadi
Source: Museum Victoria  

Wednesday I returned to Jakarta and collected my travelling documents from Imigrasi and Polri. I also visited Dalam Negeri to apply for my travelling permits from their office. By Friday, my paperwork should be complete and Anang and I will fly to the city of Palu in Sulawesi Tengah (central Sulawesi) where the next stage of our expedition begins.

The team are sending us daily GPS coordinates to let us track their progress on a Google map of the expedition.

View Sulawesi Field Team in a larger map 

Kevin is our Senior Curator of Mammals. He investigates the systematics, evolution and conservation biology of mammals with a particular interest in rodents.

I'm about to depart on the next expedition to the high mountains of Sulawesi along with MV Ornithology Fellow Karen Rowe, and MV Collection Manager of Terrestrial Vertebrates Wayne Longmore. We'll be surveying birds, rodents, bats and shrews, in areas virtually unknown to science.

Kevin Rowe in montane forest on the island of Sulawesi.
Image: Kevin Rowe
Source: Museum Victoria

Karen Rowe conducting fieldwork in lower montane forest on the island of Sulawesi.
Image: Peter Smissen
Source: Museum Victoria

N. Wayne Longmore with a Sulawesi Kingfisher (Ceyx fallax) in lowland rainforest.
Image: Kevin Rowe
Source: Museum Victoria  

An evolutionary cross-roads between Australia and Asia, the Indonesian island of Sulawesi is home to mostly endemic species (those found nowhere else) and its mix of dense equatorial rainforest and mountain peaks of some 3,000 metres lends a profusion of life rarely seen worldwide.

Our primary target on the coming expedition is Mount Sojol on Sulawesi's northern peninsula. We know from observational bird surveys that vertebrate diversity is probably quite high, but there have been virtually no specimens collected from this part of Indonesia. Like many mountains on Sulawesi, only the local people really know what is there.

However, before we can start any surveys there's a lot to do. This week the team is packing equipment and supplies needed to collect and preserve specimens. On Saturday, I fly to Jakarta.

I'll spend my first week in Indonesia completing visa and permit paperwork with visits to several government offices. Between paperwork, I will prepare supplies and examine specimens with collaborators at Museum Zoologicum Bogoriense (the national zoological museum of Indonesia).

Once the paperwork is complete, I will fly to Palu, Sulawesi and will travel 200 km up the Trans-Sulawesi Highway to the village of Siboa. From Siboa, my collaborators and I will meet with local people including the village head, or kepala desa, to obtain their support and approval. With the help of local guides we will hike into the mountains where we will spend a week searching for suitable field camps. Karen, Wayne, and other collaborators from the USA will meet me in Palu after a week of completing their own paperwork in Jakarta. They will make the trek into the forest camp and begin the process of surveying the unique birds and mammals of Mount Sojol, Sulawesi.

In the sixth week, we will all return to Palu to share the results of the inventory with the Indonesian Department of Forestry before flying back to Jakarta. There we'll spend a final week packing specimens and obtaining permits to export the specimens to Australia where they will join the state collection at Museum Victoria.

The Sulawesi research trip is part of a multi-year project supported by the National Geographic Society, the Australian Pacific Science Foundation, the Ian Potter Foundation and the Hugh D T Williamson Foundation that includes key research partners Museum Victoria, the Museum Zoologicum Bogoriense (National Museum of Indonesia), the Field Museum of Natural History, the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, and McMaster University. The multi-national team comprises Canadian, American, Australian and Indonesian researchers.

The team's announcement that they had discovered a remarkable new rodent genus – an almost toothless, worm-eating rat, Paucidentomys vermidax – made international headlines last year.

New genus and species, Paucidentomys vermidax
Image: Kevin Rowe
Source: Museum Victoria

Skull of new genus and species, Paucidentomys vermidax, the first rodent discovered with no molars.
Image: David Paul
Source: Museum Victoria   

Di is Senior Collections Manager in our Sciences Department and is absolutely passionate about the amazing and unique fishes found in our waters.

Museum Victoria staff are involved in a fantastic citizen science project that's taking a giant nationwide leap from its starting point in Tasmania. With today's launch of the Redmap Australia website, the community is being asked to look out for unusual occurrences of species in the seas around Australia. These community sightings will help reveal if fishes and other marine species are shifting their ranges with the changing climate.

A Yellowtail Kingfish (Seriola lalandi) caught away from its usual range along Tasmania's east coast and logged on Redmap.
Image: Scott Johnston
Source: Redmap

The website, also known as the Range Extension Database and Mapping Project, began in Tasmania in 2009. Already Tasmanian fishers and divers have logged hundreds of unusual sightings including Eastern Rock Lobster, Southern Maori Wrasse and King George Whiting, all spotted further south than usual.

  Southern Maori Wrasse (Ophthalmolepis lineolatus) are uncommon in Tasmanian waters but more and more are being reported to Redmap along the north and north-east coasts of Tasmania. This one was snapped by diver Emma Flukes off the coast of St Helens.
Image: Emma Flukes
Source: Redmap  

Large schools of Yellowtail Kingfish (Seriola lalandi) are being spotted in south-east Tasmanian seas, further south of their usual marine postcode.
Image: Mick Baron
Source: Redmap  

Redmap founder, Dr Gretta Pecl, is a senior marine scientist at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) at the University of Tasmania. She says Redmap "taps into the knowledge - and eyes - of thousands of fishers, divers and swimmers to track changes in fish distributions in Australia's vast coastal waters." Some three or four million Australians go fishing or diving at least once a year.

The Redmap website encourages members to share photos and anecdotes about turtles, octopus, lobsters, corals, seaweeds, urchins, prawns and marine mammals. A network of marine scientists around the country will review each photo to verify the species' identity and ensure high-quality data. Redmap aims to become not only a continental-scale range-shift monitoring program along Australia's vast coastline, but also engages Australians with marine issues using their own data.

Some seas along the Australian coast are warming at three to four times the global average. We're not sure how species will react to warmer waters - some may adapt, others may search for new habitats, while others may disappear. New arrivals of some species, especially recreational fishes, may actually benefit some communities. Understanding the movement of other species of marine pests may help minimise the risks to ecosystems or fisheries. In Victoria, fishers and divers have already been telling us about rare or uncommon fishes they've seen - including Blue Groper, Cobia, Rock Blackfish and Spotted Grubfish. Gathering sightings over time will show if these species are simply seasonal migrants, one-off visitors, or are here to stay.

Victorian diver and Redmap member Mary Malloy has been seeing more Western Blue Groper (Achoerodus gouldii) over the past decade around Queenscliff and Barwon Heads.
Image: Mary Malloy
Source: Mary Malloy  

I'm the coordinator of Redmap VIC and the MV team includes Martin Gomon, Julian Finn, Erich Fitzgerald and Kate Charlton-Robb. Although we'll officially be tracking some 35 species in Victoria through the Redmap project - such as octopus, Greynurse Sharks, Harlequin Fish, Striped Marlin, whales and dolphins - we're very keen to hear of sightings of other rare or uncommon species seen along our coast. You can get involved by becoming a Redmap member, signing up for the quarterly newsletter, liking Redmap on Facebook, and logging unusual marine life at www.redmap.org.au.

Emily is a third-year History of Art student at the University of Birmingham. She worked at MV after winning a Global Challenge award which gives students opportunities to work overseas.

In August and September I spent six weeks in Museum Victoria's Humanities Department helping to plan for the Centenary of World War I exhibition, which will be held at the museum in 2014. My main focus was on a collection of magazines named Aussie published for soldiers during and after WWI.

At the end of my placement I came away eager to contribute more, however small, and link up Melbourne Museum's WWI centenary commemorations with those that will happen in the Birmingham. I set out to find any connections between Australia and the University of Birmingham relating to WWI.

Australian and New Zealand soldiers came to Birmingham in 1914 to be treated at the University of Birmingham’s Great Hall, then called the 1st Southern General Hospital (and it is where I will be graduating next summer). Looking through the university’s collections, I came across an embroidered quilt that was produced by convalescing soldiers. Made up of nine panels, it includes an Australian panel depicting a crown with ‘Australian Commonwealth Military Forces’ written on a scroll underneath and a New Zealand panel featuring an intricate fern with ‘NZ’ over the top.

Australian Servicemen embroidery detail on Matron Kathleen Lloyd's linen cloth.
Source: BIRRC-H0013, Research & Cultural Collections, University of Birmingham

New Zealand Regiment embroidery detail embroidery detail on Matron Kathleen Lloyd's linen cloth.
Source: BIRRC-H0013, Research & Cultural Collections, University of Birmingham  

I also found photos at the Birmingham Archives and Heritage collections, with wounded soldiers from Australia and Scotland posing with nurses in the grounds of the hospital. Museum Victoria also holds many photographs taken and postcards purchased by soldiers from their time in England during WWI.

Australian soldiers with nurses at the 1st Southern General Hospital, now the University of Birmingham's Great Hall.
Source: UA10/i/4, Cadbury Research Library: Special Collections, University of Birmingham  

In addition, in the university’s collections there is an interesting article in The Mermaid magazine, entitled ‘A Trip to Gallipoli’ by Percival M. Chadwick. He was a Civil Engineering Lecturer at the University of Birmingham who left in 1915 to go and fight in Gallipoli for twelve months, only to return to Birmingham again to be treated at the university in the 1^st Southern General Hospital. He was attached to the New Zealand Engineers working with Australian and New Zealand Infantry and Cavalry regiments including a Maori contingent. He states:

The officers with whom I worked gave me a homely welcome, and I speedily felt quite at ease among them.

I could reiterate what Percival M. Chadwick said about Australians, about my colleagues at Melbourne Museum. It was a pleasure working there and one of the most enjoyable work experiences I have had. I very much look forward to seeing what Melbourne Museum puts on in its centenary exhibition in 2014 and I hope it is a success for everyone.

References:

Links:

University of Birmingham collections

The Museum Victoria and Parks Victoria crew at the Grampians National Park in western Victoria have discovered some cool critters after the first six days of the intensive Grampians Bioscan survey. Why elaborate when I can just show you what I mean.

Museum Victoria and Parks Victoria crew walking through the stunning scenery of Grampians National Park.
Image: Heath Warwick
Source: Museum Victoria  

We've come face-to-face with the cute and furry, like the Yellow-footed Antechinus, Antechinus flavipes. These small mammals look a little like mice but they are not closely related. They are carnivorous, eating insects and small lizards. Females rear young in pouches until the young outgrow the pouch and they climb onto her back for a while. Males fight during breeding season, neglect to eat, and die within twelve days after mating.

Yellow-footed Antechinus, Antechinus flavipes.
Image: David Paul
Source: Museum Victoria  

There have been five frog encounters so far, including the endangered Growling Grass Frog, Litoria raniformis. The conservation genetics of this species is currently being studied by museum PhD student Claire Keely.

Growling Grass Frog, Litoria raniformis. The female is the larger frog on the left, the male is on the right.
Image: David Paul
Source: Museum Victoria  

Warm weather has given our researchers an opportunity to sample DNA from the local reptile populations. Here, a watchful Colin catches a Tiger Snake, Notechis scutatus, for a genetics project.

Colin with a captured Tiger Snake, Notechis scutatus.
Image: Patrick Honan
Source: Museum Victoria  

A friendly Stumpy-tail, Tiliqua rugosa, faced off with museum herpetologist Jo Sumner. These lizards give birth to live young, which is uncommon in reptiles since most lay eggs. Mating pairs usually follow one another around and maintain a life-long bond.

Jo holding a Stumpy-tail, Tiliqua rugosa.
Image: Steve Wright
Source: Museum Victoria  

We saw Australia's smallest freshwater crayfish (Western Swamp Crayfish, Gramastacus insolitus, about 3 cm long) and one of the largest (Glenelg River Spiny Crayfish, Euastacus bispinosus, about 15cm long). Both species are listed as endangered on DSE's Advisory List of Threatened Invertebrate Fauna in Victoria.

Left: Western Swamp Crayfish, Gramastacus insolitus. Right: Glenelg River Spiny Crayfish, Euastacus bispinosus.
Image: David Paul / Mark Norman
Source: Museum Victoria  

And species that dramatically transform from larval stages into adults, for example the Dobsonfly, Archichauliodes guttiferus. The aquatic larval stage lives in the rocks on river beds while the adult flies around the plants along the river bank.

Dobsonfly, Archichauliodes guttiferus. Left: aquatic larva Right: adult
Image: Blair Patullo / David Paul
Source: Museum Victoria  

And saving my favourite until last – the "Jabba-the-hut" spider, more officially known as a Badge Huntsman, Neosparassus diana.

Badge Huntsman, Neosparassus diana.
Image: Heath Warwick
Source: Museum Victoria  

We've also recorded Wedge-tailed Eagles and Powerful Owls. Stand by for a report on week two! 

The survey is being conducted with help from Parks Victoria's rangers and aims to document wildlife in the Grampians area. It involves over 60 museum staff and associates, including the Melbourne Herbarium and Field Naturalists Club of Victoria, and concludes at the end of November 2012.

Links:

MV Field Guide to Victorian Fauna app

MV Blog: posts from the Wilsons Prom Bioscan, October 2011