Ngārara is a term commonly used as a translation for reptiles. However, its traditional meaning also includes insects. Ngārara as an animal grouping is an example...
Aotearoa New Zealand is rich in animal life – from tiny pepeketua and giant wētāpunga to ngā manu a Tānemahuta and ngā ika a Tangaroa. Some...
Exciting news for all fans of lizards (mokomoko) a new species has just been rediscovered. This article has been republished from The Conversation under Creative Commons...
Dr Nic Rawlence tells us about the amazing research by one of his students, who developed a specialised technique that allows scientists to non-destructively extract ancient...
Frogs for the future? is a ready-to-use cross curricular teaching resource. It uses the Ministry of Education’s 2019 Connected article Kimihia Kermit by Philippa Werry. Curriculum...
This article describes how students and Ngāti Mutunga teamed up with an ecologist to investigate frog populations – kimihia means to look for – in the...
Skink Spotter NZ is interested in weather conditions that best suit skinks to be active. This information will enable the research team to consider how skink...
FrogID is an Australian app that uses audio of frogs’ unique calls to identify various species and their locations. We can use it in Aotearoa New...
iNaturalist logs hundreds of thousands of photos of flora, fauna and fungi. There are even sound recordings too. Each is described and geo located. iNaturalist is...
What’s unique about our native reptiles and amphibians, and why are they at risk? Learn more about the science behind conservation efforts for them here in...
Chytridiomycosis, a disease caused by the amphibian chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), has caused declines and, more depressingly, extinctions in amphibian populations around the world. However,...
Cath Battersby In May 2009, I visited Otago University and met with 3 scientists who had expressed an interest in getting involved with the Science Learning...
Position: University Professor, University of Otago. Field: Conservation biology. Dr Phil Bishop was a professor and head of the zoology department at the University of Otago....
In this activity, students consider the conservation of native frogs from a number of different perspectives. By the end of this activity, students should be able...
In this activity, students use an interactive or paper-based Venn diagram to illustrate the key similarities and differences between skinks and geckos. By the end of...
In this activity, students discuss the importance of observation in science. They are given the opportunity to observe an image of a native frog and record...
In this activity, students work in small groups to rank a number of native reptiles and amphibians according to their conservation threat status or risk of...
In this activity, students have the opportunity to create a lizard-friendly habitat in the school grounds. The extension activity involves designing a suitable environment for keeping...
New Zealand’s endemic tuatara is a very unusual animal. They are the only living representative of a group of reptiles known as Rhynchocephalia (sometimes known in...
Frogs are vertebrates and belong to the class Amphibia. They are the only amphibians naturally occurring in New Zealand. All frogs have delicate, semi-permeable skin that...
Position: Scholarships Manager, University of Waikato. Previously a postdoctoral researcher, University of Otago. Field: Zoology. When we first met Dr Kelly Hare in 2010, she was...
Position: Emeritus Professor, Department of Zoology, University of Otago. Field: Zoology and herpetology. Dr Alison Cree was a professor in the Department of Zoology at the...
Skinks and geckos are the only 2 native families of lizard found in Aotearoa New Zealand (note that tuatara are not lizards). They are vertebrates and...
Captive management is where animals are kept in captivity in some sort of enclosed space to assist survival of their species. This might be in a...
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