One small group of field naturalists have been given a glimpse behind usually closed doors at the Northern Territory's most significant library of insects.
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00:00In the early 1980s, Dr Brian Thistleton was researching fruit flies in Papua New Guinea,
00:09when a new species was named in his honour.
00:11It 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
00:22Territory's official insect collection, an entomological database of 56,000 specimens
00:28stretching 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.
00:51We learn to identify insects or pick things up that we might not usually see and then
00:57say, hey we found this really interesting bug and maybe that bug will be a new species
01:01or maybe it will be an invasive species.
01:03For many of us here, we're in paradise seeing an insect collection like that, it's just
01:08fantastic.
01:09That's what's called aphid somatic colouration or warning colouration.
01:13With 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.
01:23We monitor their Facebook page because they're always putting pictures up of new things they've
01:27found.
01:29Some of them are quite expert.
01:32It's very interesting, you can see all of the different things that are going on in
01:37the Northern Territory and just all the people sharing all the different types of insects.
01:43A cross-pollination between experts and enthusiasts.