Search for Tasmanian devil ‘Mary’ missing from popular Gold Coast wildlife park
The recently arrived young devil has been kept in a secure indoor facility while quarantining, but was noticed missing on Tuesday morning.
Prepare for imminent return of El Niño, UN warns
UN agency predicts phenomenon that supercharges weather extremes has 80% chance of forming before September
The world must prepare for the imminent return of El Niño and the supercharged weather extremes it brings, the UN has warned.
The powerful natural weather pattern, which raises global temperatures and worsens some rainfall, has an 80% chance of forming before September and a 90% chance before November, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Tuesday.
Ever seen a cave cricket? Australia now has three new species of these spindly, spider-like creatures
When you picture a cave, you probably think of an environment devoid of life. But for most caves on Earth, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
Caves are remarkably good at supporting life. Underground air temperature and humidity levels are usually consistent. For vulnerable species unable to tolerate fluctuations above ground, caves are a haven. This is why ecologists think of caves as evolutionary time capsules. They preserve troglofauna – small animals living mostly or entirely within caves – that might have otherwise died out during ancient climate change events.
Australian caves are home to many such species, ranging from blind fishes, to blind eels, and even blind wasps.
Perhaps the weirdest are cave crickets. Cave crickets are spindly, spider-like insects very different to your average backyard cricket. They can’t chirp and are flightless. Because they can’t travel long distances, all of Australia’s species are endemic – that is, they’re found nowhere else.
When the pioneering entomologist Aola Richards retired in the 1980s, it was thought Australia only harboured 23 cave cricket species and knowledge of these creatures languished. But in our recent research, we found three new species – with more to come. One was named to honour Richards, and another uses Gundungurra language in a first for Western scientific naming.
Underground room service
The long legs and antennae of cave crickets mean that some people mistake them for spiders, but these animals are harmless.
As their common name suggests, cave crickets thrive in cool, dark and humid environments such as caves.
These crickets also play a critical ecological role in cave ecosystems – by leaving them. When night falls, these savvy scavengers leave the cave entrance and venture above ground to forage for food, chomping on vegetation, other insects and whatever they can get their six legs on.
Food is in short supply in caves. This is why cave crickets are so vital – they can be prey for other species, while the nutrients they bring back and poo out act as a crucial top-up for other species, such as bats. They’re essentially cave room service.
How we found and named three new species
Despite the uniqueness of Australia’s cave crickets, research has been minimal since the late Aola Richards retired. Richards was responsible for naming almost all cave cricket species in Australia and New Zealand.
We had a hunch there were more to find which hadn’t yet been described, based on our fieldwork and observations by citizen scientists.
We worked with experienced cavers to collect crickets from the entrances of caves and abandoned mineshafts in Victoria and New South Wales.
In the lab, we examined dozens of specimens in detail. By comparing their physical characteristics with species already known to science, we were able to find three different types of cave cricket in the Speleotettix genus.
To make sure our identification was correct, we sequenced their DNA and compared it to known species. All three were distinct. Tiny differences in the base pairs of their DNA – often referred to as the building blocks of life – provide a reliable way of determining when one species is distinct from another.
Finding a name
Naming a species might sound simple. In reality, it’s a long and complicated process with important implications for conserving our native species. Without a formal name, species aren’t eligible for protection under Australia’s environmental laws – effectively rendering them invisible.
We chose the names Speleotettix aolae, S. binoomea, and S. palaga.
The first species was named to acknowledge Richards’ huge contribution to our knowledge of cave crickets. In fact, several specimens of S. aolae were collected by Richards more than 60 years ago. These museum specimens proved essential in understanding where the new species were found.
Speleotettix aolae and S. palaga were collected from caves and mineshafts in Victoria, while S. binoomea is from the World Heritage-listed Jenolan Caves and surrounding cave systems in NSW.
First Gundungurra word in a species name
The Gundungurra people are the Traditional Custodians of the Jenolan Caves.
We named the species found in these and surrounding caves Speleotettix binoomea. Binoomea means “dark places” in Gundungurra, and is used by the Gundungurra people to refer to the Jenolan Caves. To select the name, we worked with Gundungurra Elder Aunty Sharyn Halls and the Jenolan Caves Reserve Trust.
The choice of name recognises the deep cultural link between this species, the Jenolan Caves, and their Traditional Custodians.
To our knowledge, this is the first time a Gundungurra word has been used in the the Western scientific naming process.
Thousands of Australian species still without names
Australia and New Zealand are home to an estimated 225,000 species of insects.
Most of these are sorely understudied. In fact, only a third of our insect fauna has been formally named, and many are entirely unknown to science. That is, we estimate they should exist but a lack of study means they’ve never even been collected, let alone named.
Today, fewer than 30 Australian cave cricket species have been formally described. Our field collections and genetic analyses suggest the true number is at least double this amount.
The first step to protect a species is to describe it and name it. Once a species has a formal name, scientists and authorities can assess their risk of extinction and work to protect them.
Caves have long been a refuge, but this isn’t guaranteed. As the climate changes, drier, hotter conditions will intrude into caves. That could pose an existential threat to cave crickets and other cave dwellers, many of which can quickly dry out.
We hope this research will revive interest in Australia’s cave crickets and represents a crucial first step towards protecting these strange animals.
Perry G. Beasley-Hall receives funding from the Australian Biological Resources Study (ABRS).
Brock A. Hedges receives funding from The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).
New deer hunting rules not expected to bring numbers down
The Tasmanian government is making changes to the rules for deer hunting in the state, but farmers say it won’t be enough to bring numbers down, with the sector’s peak body calling for the species to be declared a pest.
Three hours of free power a day sounds good – but is Australia’s scheme fair?
From July 1, many Australians can choose something that once sounded absurd: free electricity in the middle of the day. The federal government’s opt-in Solar Sharer Offer will give three hours of free power to households with smart meters in New South Wales, South Australia and southeast Queensland. Victoria’s separate scheme will launch in October.
Free power sounds like a giveaway. It isn’t. It’s meant to encourage people to use more electricity during the hours when solar power flows into the grid. The real aim is to get people to shift the use of water heaters, pool pumps, air-conditioning and electric vehicle charging to the middle of the day. At other times, power prices will be slightly more expensive.
The main challenge for Australia’s power systems is no longer how to meet peak demand in the evening. We now have to use or manage the floods of very cheap solar during the sunniest hours when there’s more supply than demand. If this imbalance isn’t managed, electricity voltage and frequency can move outside safe limits, equipment can trip, and the risk of outages rises.
The scheme makes sense. But there are still questions about its fairness. Electrified households will benefit most, while renters and other groups may benefit less.
The challenge of solar abundance
About one in three Australian homes now has solar. At times, this power source can supply 50% of total demand on Australia’s biggest power grid, the National Energy Market. Wholesale prices have regularly gone negative in recent quarters.
In big solar states such as South Australia, solar can supply more power than the state can use. Surplus power is exported, stored in batteries or curtailed – wasted.
The Solar Sharer Offer is meant to make better use of these floods of solar power.
This financial year, the three hours of free power will be 11am to 2pm daily in NSW and southeast Queensland and 12 to 3pm in South Australia. Australia’s energy regulator chose these times to match when solar output is highest, and network and wholesale costs are lowest. This may change year by year.
The reason the scheme isn’t national is because it’s tied to the Default Market Offer — a regulated safety net plan for electricity customers – which only applies in NSW, SA and southeast Queensland.
Who will benefit most?
Ensuring fair access has been a constant challenge for household clean-energy schemes. People who own their homes and have access to capital are usually better placed to benefit. This scheme has the same issue.
It’s easy to picture the ideal customer for three hours of free power – a homeowner with a smart meter, flexible hot water, electric vehicle, home battery and the ability to choose when power-hungry appliances run.
That’s great for them. But what about everyone else? For instance, you have to have a smart meter to be eligible. Only about 60% of households have one.
The harder question is whether this offer is fair for other households.
Renters, apartment residents and people on embedded networks in retirement villages, caravan parks or shopping centres face another barrier. If they opt in without being able to make good use of the free power, they could actually be worse off due to the higher prices at other times. These concerns were raised during the consultation process.
Making it fairer
The government is aware of these issues. The free power period is capped at 24 kilowatt hours a day, enough to cover several large daytime loads such as hot water, dishwashing, laundry, air-conditioning or part-charging of an EV.
The cap matters because offering electricity for free still incurs costs for energy retailers. To recover the missed revenue during the free window, retailers will boost other usage charges. Capping free power at 24 kWh a day limits how much high-consumption households can use at zero price, which limits how much revenue has to be recovered from usage at other times of day.
More needs to be done to ensure it’s fair. A key step is unglamorous but effective: helping households heat water during the day. Heating water takes a lot of power. Electric hot-water systems are often on controlled-load tariffs designed for overnight operation. A South Australian trial moved close to 50% of water heating from night to day with little reported inconvenience.
Where safe and practical, retailers and network businesses could shift the time these systems charge to the middle of the day. Governments could help rentals and apartment residents by supporting the use of timers, smart controllers and efficient heat-pump hot-water systems. The same logic applies to other flexible loads.
The free lunch is real. The question is who gets a seat at the table.
Saman Gorji receives funding from the Recycling and Clean Energy Commercialisation Hub (REACH), supported by the Australian government's Trailblazer Universities Program.
Alireza Ganjovi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.