Wildlife Australia Magazine Wildlife Australia Magazine Winter 2018 Back Issue

Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, the release of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas – has wrought extraordinary changes on our atmosphere and altered the very nature of the Earth’s climate system, explains Lesley Hughes from the Climate Council. Such rapid change will test many species’ ability to adapt and survive. But what, if anything, are we doing about it?

Water striders are considered ‘model’ insects for studying how adapting to ecological conditions can drive speciation. Les Irwig and Tom Weir explore the lifestyles of these unusual invertebrates.

Evolution is everywhere and it’s only getting started. Nature is a seething, swirling whirlpool of chaotic change and its fundamental units aren’t ‘units’ at all but processes – and processes are evolutionary, explains evolutionary biologist Timothy Jackson.

Historically, salps and pyrosomes were considered unimportant components of marine systems. Researchers such as Natasha Henschke are now investigating whether they could increase with climate change and destabilise marine ecosystems.

The greater glider is a highly specialised arboreal marsupial that feeds primarily on eucalyptus leaves and flowers and is sensitive to environmental change and predation. Sadly, we may be the greatest threat posed to its existence, explains Penelope Webster, as we’re responsible for the widespread habitat destruction that threatens its long-term viability.

In general, marsupials are less encephalised than comparable placentals, but among Australian marsupials, bandicoots in the order Peramelemorphia score the lowest for ‘braininess’, out-brained by even the ‘primitive’ monotremes. Why is this so? Antoni Milewski asks.