Users will recognise a change to the look and feel of the species pages, and major improvements to the search and quality of results on our species lists.

The focus was to update the naming system and bring it up to speed with the key authoritative sources, namely: the Australian Plant Name Index (APNI), Australian Plant Census (APC) and the Australian Faunal Directory from the Australian Biological Resources Study (ABRS) as well as Australian Fungi, Australian Mosses Online, Australian Codes of Aquatic Biota, Catalogue of Life, and the New Zealand Organisms Register.

This was a major piece of work requiring a complete rewrite of some of the ALA’s original software. The major benefits to users will be an improvement to the quality of species information. In addition, duplicate records have been removed and, where possible, links to the original source data have been included.

Naming and classification of biological organisms (taxonomy) is one of the most fundamental streams of science. It aims to provide a complete list of all living organisms on the planet and their relationships to eachother. By establishing a common language for all organisms and their taxonomic categories, it enables scientists across the globe to communicate and collaborate effectively.

It’s easy to think that a list of names is more or less set in stone but taxonomy is surprisingly dynamic and changes occur frequently. The ALA upgrade makes it easier for us to update our species lists on a regular basis. As a result, we can keep the ALA species lists up-to-date with developments or changes in taxonomic science.

This is a major change and so we won’t be surprised if users encounter some (not many!) issues in the first few weeks after release. Please contact us if you need assistance.

Many thanks to all our colleagues at ABRS, APNI, APC, the Council of Heads of Australiasian Herbaria (CHAH), as well as Tom May and Niels Klazenga at the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne.

Aboriginal people manage some of Australia’s most remote and difficult to access parts of Australia. Limited access by people can mean that environmental threats such as intense wildfire and invasive species take hold. Thanks to funding and support from the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA), Australian National University (ANU)  Centre for Biodiversity Analysis (CBA) and the Foundation and Friend of the Botnaic Gardens (FFBG), in April 2015 the Yugul Mangi Rangers, Mingirringi (Traditional Owners) and Jungayi (Traditional Managers) were able to travel to remote Ngandi Country in the proposed SE Arnhem Land Indigenous Protected Area. Ecologists from Macquarie University in Sydney (Emilie Ens and Mitchell Scott), the Acting Collections Manager at the National Herbarium of New South Wales (Gillian Towler) and Ngukurr Language Centre Linguist (Salome Harris) who have all been working with the Rangers were fortunate enough to join the trip and assist with cross-cultural biodiversity surveys and cultural knowledge recordings.

FAMILY AND CULTURE

Ngandi Country is some of the most remote Country managed by the Yugul Mangi Rangers and represents a significant part of the proposed SE Arnhem Land Indigenous Protected Area (IPA). Very few Ngandi Traditional Owners have been to this area due to geographical, access and resource limitation issues. Through this project we were able to get enough resources, including hiring a helicopter, to take people out there at the request of Cherry Daniels, Ngandi Traditional Owner and IPA cultural advisor.

Cherry Daniels thought she may never return to her Country as she is now 70 years old. She had only been there twice in her life – once in 2004 and once when she was in her fifty’s. Her daughter Marjorie had never been there. But an opportunity created by the Rangers, Traditional Owners, Emilie Ens, and Gill Towler with support from the ALA, CBA and FFBG, led to 30 community members, including 4 generations of Ngandi people, making a return to their Country.

Marjorie Daniels said of the trip:

“Well for me I reckon it was really good to go out there…look all the different place, look all the different plants and different animals. That environment is a bit different to where we stay in the community [Ngukurr]. It was cool out there, not hot. It was lovely to sit down under the shady tree and cook…fishing…I just liked looking at that whole place. It reminds me of…well that area it belongs to my husband…that river…it reminds me of my husband. His daddy used to tell him stories about that area long time ago. And I been want him to see that place really badly…so I’ve seen it now and I am happy I’ve been out there with my son [Scott Dingul].

It’s a great experience for kids. For little kids like my little daughter now, my niece [Petria Lingiari] and the two little boys of [my sister] Annette [Matthew and Kelvin Lingiari]. All that mob it’s all been really good for that mob so they can learn. Learn about both ways – blekbala way and munanga [white fella] way.

When we took the kids [out bush on a school trip after this] they couldn’t stop talking about Warrpani [billabong in Ngandi Country]. They told the rest of the kids how Warrpani was like to them. They felt they were home with their grandmother [Cherry]. Their real home. It was sad going away from there for me and mum…and the kids. We couldn’t stop talking about it when we came back down at Ngukurr.

To me it was really good going out. I love travelling out. It was a really great experience to me ‘cause I never been in that area since I was born. Now I’m 49 years of age, nearly 50, that’s the time I went out to see my mum’s area. You know. She hasn’t been taking us there for a long, long time. Only when she was getting old now she asked my brother if she could take some families out you know. And it was ok for her. They let her do that now.”

When visiting Country it is important that the right people give consent and the right people are present. Both Cherry Daniels and Winston Thompson are senior Ngandi Traditional Owners and they directed who came and where we would camp and conduct surveys. The men set up their own camp for a couple nights and did surveys in a different area to the women. Ernest Daniels and Kelvin Rogers are Jungayi for that area (Jungayi are the Traditional land managers, as opposed to owners). Their job is to ensure the Traditional Owners and all visitors are doing the right thing on Country.

DOCUMENTING SPECIES SO WE KNOW WHAT NEEDS TO BE PROTECTED

Remote areas where people don’t often go are at risk from intense wildfires and invasive species including feral cats and cane toads. These threats have caused significant declines in goannas, snakes, quolls and small mammals in this region. Also, remote areas that have not experienced or been allowed access to scientists can often harbour species of plants and animals that haven’t been adequately described by Western science. On this trip, we wanted to find out what animals and plants were out on Ngandi Country. We caught and recorded animals and plants at three survey areas and used CyberTracker to electronically record data.

One remote area of the Parsons Range was crawling with bandayamah (Ngandi for gecko). Whilst spotlighting at night, we found many Marbled Velvet Geckos (Oedura marmorata). As biginini (kriol for children), the gecko has strongly coloured yellow bands. When it grows into an adult, the bands disperse and it becomes light purple. We collected tissue samples (tail tips) from all lizards we caught and their DNA will be sequenced by the CBA. Some plant specimens were also taken to the NSW Herbarium for further identification. We hope that through this collaboration we can work together to describe some new species to science.

We collected plant specimens at sites on the Parsons Range and near billabong and creek areas. We pressed the plants and took them back to Ngukurr where we will identify them using Aboriginal language and scientific names and add them to the Yugul Mangi Herbarium. For species we can’t identify, Gill Towler will take them back to the NSW Herbarium for comparison with other known species and then bring that information back. Gill Towler received a scholarship from the Foundation and Friends of the Botanic Gardens to participate in this project.

Thanks to the ALA, CBA, FFBG, Northern Land Council, Macquarie University and Ngukurr Language Centre for supporting this culturally and biologically valuable trip. Now that the families have returned to Ngukurr Community, they are keen to do trips out this way more often, to look after this unique Country and its biocultural resources.

This post has been produced by the Yugul Mangi Rangers of south-east Arnhem Land, with Emilie Ens and Mitchell Scott (Macquarie University, Sydney). Get in touch at yugulmangi.rangers2@gmail.com emilie.ens@mq.edu.au mitchell.ll.scott@gmail.com

Read more about their Indigenous Ecological Knowledge projects on the ALA blog:

Learning by doing: The ALA is sponsoring Yugul Mangi Rangers and ecologists to conduct two-way biodiversity research in remote Arnhem Land

First ALA records of elusive Leichhardt’s Grasshopper in Arnhem Land

Bringing south-east Arnhem Land stories to south-east Australia mob

What do we mean by “digitisation” and why is it important? Digitisation is the act of creating a digital record for an existing physical one. For example, transcribing hand-written specimen tags or photographing old expedition diaries into digital and searchable resources. Digitisation ensures that fragile physical collections be preserved long-term; reducing physical handling of items which would cause deterioration over time or even loss. Allowing these digital versions to be available online is important to global biodiversity research; eliminating the requirement to visit a collection in person, these resources become available to anyone, anytime, anywhere.

Representatives from across Australia and around the globe converged on the CSIRO Black Mountain site in Canberra to share their knowledge, experience, and thoughts on issues such as: data sharing, digitisation techniques, imaging, new technologies, data visualisation, outreach, public participation, and project management. Participants also had a chance to tour some of the CSIRO collections that are held in Canberra: Australian National Wildlife Collection, Australian National Insect Collection, and neighbouring Australian National Botanic Gardens.

The summit gave stage to representatives from international collections such as the Smithsonian and the Natural History Museum of London, and locally the  Australian Museum, the Royal Botanic Gardens, SA Museum, and the Marine Biodiversity Hub (just to name a few), to share their current results and future requirements in the global effort to digitise and share records to enable open access in biodiversity knowledge.

After 4 days of presentations and discussions, the workshop participants reached five important conclusions and associated action items, these crucial points and greater detail on the summit program can be investigated further in a recent piece by iDigBio’s Gil Nelson.

Please visit the following link for further information about this event: https://www.idigbio.org/content/digitization-biological-collections-global-focus

At the core of PhyloLink is the ability to intersect a phylogenetic tree with species occurrence records, environmental data and character information, resulting in the ability to generate flexible and customisable visualisations, profiles and metrics for biodiversity. The tools are intended for both novices and experts alike, and aims to make phylogenetic approaches to data exploration and visualisation accessible to a broad range of audiences.

A phylogeny (or a tree of life) is essentially a theory about how organisms are related to one another through evolutionary time. Phylogenies are based on the assumption that more closely related species will be more similar to one another, and they are commonly built using genetic sequences or physical characters. They are often visually represented as trees: the tips of the ever branching tree representing species, and the branches representing ‘evolutionary distance’ (e.g. length of time) from the ancestors from which they evolved.

The tool builds on PhyloJIVE and was developed as a collaborative project.

For a quick Youtube tutorial on how to use Phylolink click here.

Explore Phylolink at http://phylolink.ala.org.au/

This pilot project explores questions on the benefits and risks to Traditional Owners of data sharing, and the resource opportunities the ALA offers to them.  At the end of this pilot our group would like to:

• establish and test a model for two-way information exchange between the ALA and Indigenous groups,
• provide a model that could be generalised to provide the framework by which the ALA engages with other Indigenous groups on knowledge exchange,
• help build trust between the ALA and Indigenous groups.

Work on the ground for this project will start in the middle of 2015, toward the end of the wet season.  At this time we would like to introduce ALA users to the Olkola people.

In December 2014, nearly 700,000 hectares of ancestral land was returned to the Olkola people.  Under the handover Olkola National Park, an area covering 269,830 hectares was established and will be jointly managed by the Olkola people and the Queensland government.

Olkola country sits in a unique position along the northern end of the Great Dividing Range with the headwaters of five rivers that flow into both the Coral Sea and the Gulf of Carpentaria.  Habitats of extensive wetlands, rare and unique tall open forests, remnant rainforest refugia and intact landscapes of savannah woodlands will be managed by the Olkola people.  Also on Olkola country are nine threatened regional ecosystems, (active Golden Shouldered Parrot nesting sites), two species of plants listed as threatened under the EPBC Act, as well as bora grounds and sites of cultural heritage and significance to the Olkola people.

Five clan groups make up the Olkola people, and each clan group speaks for their respective country and hold special significance and value to story places and animal totems associated with landscape features.  Rock-art, scar trees, burial sites, sacred sites occur across the landscape. Olkola people are returning to their ancestral country and are actively engaged to restore their values for their country and ensure these are properly managed.

The Atlas of Living Australia is currently supporting two Indigenous Ecological Knowledge (IEK) pilot projects. These projects are aimed at exploring and encouraging two-way knowledge sharing between traditional land custodians and the Atlas. More information on the Yugul Mangi pilot project can be found here.

University herbaria are important teaching collections, with specialised holdings that often reflect the diversity of the region in which the university is situated, as well as the professional expertise of the teaching staff. The inclusion of WOLL and LTB brings the number of registered herbaria contributing to the ALA to 13, which includes four of Australia’s 16 university herbaria.

Janet Cosh Herbarium

The Janet Cosh Herbarium (WOLL) was established in the University of Wollongong’s School of Biological Sciences in 1991 from a bequest made by the late Janet Cosh, an amateur botanist from the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. This remarkable woman began her botanical studies in her late 60s and over the next three decades became widely regarded as an expert on the local flora. By the time of her death in 1989 she had made two significant and highly professional collections of flora from the Sydney/Illawarra and Highlands regions, over 1500 of which formed the basis of the current collection at the University of Wollongong.

The Janet Cosh herbarium houses over 11,000 specimens of mainly vascular flora, with a focus on species present in the Sydney/Illawarra, South Coast and Southern Highlands regions of New South Wales. Ancillary collections include bryophytes collected by Prof. Sharon Robinson for studies of the effects of global warming on east Antarctic moss and lichen communities; Banksia pollen slides; Tasmanian and New Zealand bryophytes; and various marine macroalgae of the Sydney and South Coast region. The herbarium is currently open two days per week and provides plant identification services, training and teaching support for undergraduate classes and researchers.

La Trobe University Herbarium

The La Trobe University Herbarium (LTB) was established in 1967 by geneticist Noel Thurling, who is responsible for many of the early collections. Trevor Whiffin took over the running of the herbarium in 1973 when he began at the university as a lecturer in plant systematics. He kept this role until his retirement in 2008, and most of the collection was developed under his watch.
The majority of the collection is from southern and eastern Australia, with an emphasis on Eucalyptus, Angophora, Acacia, Correa and rainforest plants, including Melastomataceae, Monimiaceae, and Rutaceae (Flindersia). LTB also houses some collections from Papua New Guinea. The herbarium is actively used by researchers and students in the new Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environment, both for teaching and to house vouchers and other new collections.

Until recently, LTB – which contains an estimated 25,000 specimens – had no register or database of specimens. With support from the ALA, and staff at the National Herbarium of Victoria, a Specify collections management system was set up and data entry began in 2010, and over 3,400 specimens have been databased to date. LTB is currently working towards completing the databasing of their eucalypt collection, with funding provided by the Bjarne K Dahl Trust.