For some, it's the stuff of nightmares, wasps, moths, ants and beetles. But for insect enthusiasts, a dedicated collection of creepy crawlies is a dream come true. And now, a small group has been given a glimpse at the Northern Territory's most significant library of insects which is usually kept behind closed doors.
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00:00In the early 1980s, Dr Brian Thistleton was researching fruit flies in Papua New Guinea,
00:08when a new species was named in his honour.
00:10It was called Thistletonia, it was found from Mount Hagen in Papua New Guinea, but it's
00:15since been found in Indonesia.
00:17Forty years on, he's the custodian of this important archive in Darwin, the Northern
00:21Territory's official insect collection, an entomological database of 56,000 specimens
00:27stretching back more than half a century.
00:30Every single record in that collection, in that big broad database, is verified by a
00:36specimen on a pin or on a slide or in alcohol.
00:41Today the doors to the collection have been opened to the NT Field Naturalists Club, a
00:46community of aspiring entomologists and citizen scientists.
00:50We learn to identify insects or, you know, pick things up that we might not usually see
00:56and then say, hey, we found this really interesting bug and maybe that bug will be a new species
01:00or maybe it will be an invasive species.
01:02For many of us here, we're in paradise seeing an insect collection like that, it's just
01:07fantastic.
01:09That's what's called aposematic colouration or warning colouration.
01:12With an online membership of nearly 18,000, the club isn't just a community of hobbyists.
01:18They're an informed surveillance network in the fight against biosecurity threats.
01:22We monitor their Facebook page because they're always putting pictures up of new things they've found.
01:28Some of them are quite expert.
01:31It's very interesting, you can see all of the different things that are going on in
01:36the Northern Territory and just all the people sharing all the different types of insects.
01:43It was citizen science that helped alert authorities to the arrival of papaya mealybug in the Northern
01:48Territory, an invasive pest from Central America which tore through many of Darwin's tropical
01:53trees in 2023.
01:55Now the expert who stopped the invasion with the deployment of native ladybirds is sharing
02:00the wonders of her mealybug expertise.
02:03I'm very happy to see their reaction by seeing this microscopic world which they can't see
02:11in day-to-day life.
02:12A cross-pollination between experts and enthusiasts.
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