classification

Discover more about the red admiral butterfly, winner of the 2024 Bug of the Year, and how we can help the butterflies of Aotearoa New Zealand....

Nā te manaakitanga a Matua Mokoro Gillett, a te tumuaki o Te Wharekura o Te Rau Aroha, tēnei mahi i tutuki. The purpose of this learning...

What are extremophilic microorganisms? Let’s start by looking closer at microorganisms. All the organisms we know about on Earth are either cellular (by far the majority)...

This Connected article by Priscilla Wehi and Hemi Whaanga explores how early Māori named and grouped the plants and animals they found around them. Discover what...

Dolphins are often seen around the coast of Aotearoa New Zealand, but only two species – Hector’s and Māui – are endemic. Similarities and differences It...

This Connected article by Sophie Fern, reports on a survey of a 100-metre long rocky reef located 11 kilometres off the Taranaki coast. Students from local...

We usually think of insects as being animals of the land, but did you know that many insects spend part of their lives in water? Some...

One of New Zealand’s most well known insects is the wētā, of the Orthoptera order, but there are thousands of other insects species, some of which...

What is an insect and should we really care about these creepy crawlies? In a word – yes. As American biologist Edward O Wilson puts it,...

Our planet has life on it, and for that reason, it may be unique in the universe. Ironically enough, we know much more about some of...

The ‘Buzz of bees’ is a Connected journal devoted entirely to bees. Each article has diagrams and illustrations that offer opportunities for students to develop the...

In 1880, Alice McKenzie saw a large blue bird in a remote part of Fiordland. Alice and her family made careful observations of the bird and...

Scientifically, takahē have been something of a mystery. For several decades, it was assumed that takahē were extinct in both the North and South Islands –...

Ahi Pepe MothNet is a citizen science project that explores New Zealand’s native moths, their distributions and whether vegetation restoration impacts moth diversity. One aspect of...

Moths are members of the order Lepidoptera, but these mostly nocturnal creatures are often in the shadow of the brighter, day-flying butterflies. New Zealand has fewer...

The New Zealand Government’s Participatory Science Platform (PSP) is a world-first initiative that aims to engage communities in research projects that are locally relevant and have...

Names are important. They identify who we are and where we come from. But sometimes, names don’t tell the whole story. For example, the Oxford Dictionary...

Moths, along with butterflies, are part of the order Lepidoptera (from the Greek for scaled wings). Over 90% of New Zealand’s Lepidoptera species are endemic, found...

The MothNet Shedding Light on the Night and Ahi Pepe Mothnet projects involve the collection and identification of moth species. The project is a partnership between...

Ecology is the study of interactions between living things and their environment, so there are two important questions we need to be able to answer. How...

New Zealand is home to a wide variety of water fowl. Water fowl is the common name for the Anatidae, the family of birds that includes...

The blue duck/whio is endemic to New Zealand. It has some unique adaptations that allow it to survive in its specific habitat. These features include a...

As humans, we’re curious about ourselves. Where did we come from? How did we evolve? Hominins Like all living things, early humans are classified using the...

Wētā are endemic to New Zealand. They are quite large compared to other insects, with some weighing more than a sparrow. There are wētā that hiss,...