Alan and Deanna Henderson have left the nest of Live Exhibits to head to where the weather is hot and the rain is plentiful. They have left an amazing legacy at the Museum and will be greatly missed by not only the Live Exhibits crew but by staff across the entire venue. They were pivotal players in the production of the ever popular Bugs Alive! exhibition and the book Bugs Alive: a guide to keeping Australian invertebrates. Every live display up until this point in time at the Melbourne Museum has had the Henderson ‘touch’. With Luke now managing exhibitions across the entire Museum Victoria campus (End of an era – Luke Bowers out!) and the Henderson's in Queensland our department is a little quieter.

Alan and Deanna collecting spiders in remote areas of Victoria for Bugs Alive! Source: Museum Victoria

We have now survived the first month of not having Alan as our chief. So far so good. We have all been pondering … ‘what would Alan do in this situation’ every time we are faced with an issue we would have once turned to him for. From ‘what would Alan do with a single female Leaf Winged Katydid’ that was sent down from the tropics last week – we have set it up in a pent house suite in our humid room with every conceivable laying medium to get her to deposit eggs and hoping it works.

Tim checking out our new Leaf Winged Katydid before setting her up in her new home. Photo: Jessie Sinclair. Source: Museum Victoria.

We have still been managing to have great success with invertebrates in the collection. Our parthenogenetic Palm Katydids are going very well living on southern species of palm fronds. They are growing at an amazing rate. We have had enough success with them to be able to send them out to other invertebrate keepers keen to give this large species of katydid a go. Our Giant Katydids are hatching from eggs laid earlier in the year – they are our second generation of captive bred stock that originated from Far North Queensland. We are now trying them on a variety of vegetable garden plants to get them on a readily available ‘southern’ food plant in addition to apple leaves that we found are great as summer fodder.

A subadult Palm Katydid being reared on local Melbourne palm fronds. Photo: Jessie Sinclair. Source: Museum Victoria.

A Giant Katydid nymph resting on a leaf. This is our 2nd generation of captive bred specimens. Photo: Claire Steel. Source: Museum Victoria.

Deanna and Alan have already started sending us packages of insects from their own backyard in Queensland. Today we received a new colony of Green Tree Ants that were quickly transferred to display in Bugs Alive! They will quickly settle into this new island home where they can silk the leaves together to make a new nest that will enthuse the audiences in the Museum. They live in an enclosure with a moat running around it as they are great escape artists and having the water running around the island is the only way to keep them in! Who knows what other animals Alan and Deanna may find living in there tropical paradise of a backyard. If you are keen to have a look visit their Blog at http://minibeastwildlife.blogspot.com/

Green Tree Ants take a bit of escape proofing to keep them in their new homes. Their larvae release silk to help bind leaves together to create a new nest. Photo: Alan Henderson. Source: Museum Victoria.