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    • A new genus and species of landhopper for New Zealand
      • Landhoppers—tiny, jumping crustaceans—are a vital yet often overlooked part of Aotearoa New Zealand’s invertebrate fauna. Northland entomologist Olly Ball, University College Cork’s amphipod expert Alan Myers and Te Papa geneticist Lara Shepherd have just described a new species and genus of landhopper from Manawatāwhi Three Kings Islands in Northland. A

    • A new bird for New Zealand – MacGillivray’s prion
      • Prions are a group of small seabirds that are very difficult to tell apart. This is part of the reason why it took more than 70 years to identify New Zealand’s first MacGillivray’s prion. Bird curator Colin Miskelly describes how modern genetic methods were used to identify old museum specimens – and to add a new species to the New Zealand and Australian lists.

    • Palaeo introductions #2 – The Fossil Preparation Laboratory
      • For the second blog in our series introducing places, people, methods, and species important to palaeontological research at Te Papa and beyond, curators Felix Marx and Alan Tennyson, along with Researcher William Parker and Collection Manager Hazel Richards, introduce us to the new Te Papa Fossil Preparation Laboratory. We’re very happy to introduce you to the

    • An eventful City Nature Challenge 2025
      • The iNaturalist City Nature Challenge is an annual event where cities around the world compete to record the most observations and species, and have the greatest number of participants over a four-day period. Science Researcher Lara Shepherd, Invertebrate Curator Kerry Walton, and Vertebrate Curator Andrew Stewart discuss some of the events held in Wellington during this year’s Challenge, where they were able to share their expertise to help people explore nature.

    • Highlights from the 2025 City Nature Challenge in Greater Wellington
      • Each year, cities across the globe gear up for the iNaturalist City Nature Challenge – a thrilling four-day race to document the most wildlife observations, uncover the widest array of species, and rally the highest number of participants. It’s a celebration of biodiversity, citizen science, and the unexpected wonders hiding

    • A sneak peek inside The Incredible Insects of Aotearoa
      • Along with Simon Pollard, Curator Invertebrates Phil Sirvid is the co-author of Why is that Spider Dancing? The Amazing Arachnids of Aotearoa. The insect-inspired sequel The Incredible Insects of Aotearoa launches in May 2025. Here, Phil gives us a sneak peek between the covers. Inside The Incredible Insects of Aotearoa, Simon and

    • How to (actually) get your GLAM using Wikipedia
      • Wikipedia’s editing community and organisations like Te Papa have been talking for decades about how much we can do for each other. But with only so many hours in the day, adding a global encyclopedia to our workload is a hard sell. Digital Channels Outreach Manager Lucy Schrader fills you in on how we’re growing our own Wiki community, making this partnership much less intimidating.

    • Nancy Adams: A love of mountain flowers
      • Nancy Adams was one of New Zealand’s most prolific botanists and a talented artist. She made substantial contributions to Te Papa’s herbarium collection and produced a vast number of botanical illustrations, which were included in widely distributed and well-regarded books about New Zealand flora. As part of their summer research, Lucia Adams and Margo Montes de Oca spent some time looking through several of Nancy’s field guides which were published as part of the ‘Mobil New Zealand Nature Series’ – in particular, Mountain Flowers in New Zealand (1980) and New Zealand Native Trees (1967). You may recognise these books – they are beautiful, helpful and accessible guides to plants in the New Zealand bush.

    • Colonial collecting – returning a raranga vest
      • Te Papa collection manager and kaitiaki taonga Moana Parata shares a story of her recent journey to Los Angeles to bring home a precious taonga, a raranga vest collected by Carl Freeze, an American Mormon missionary in the early 1900s.

    • The April Fool’s Day Files: Blinded by the light
      • Welcome to the second instalment of the April Fool’s Day Files, where we celebrate the conniving con artists, tantalising tricksters, and devilish deceivers of the natural world. This year, Natural History curators Phil Sirvid and Thom Linley illuminate how animals lie with light. The bioluminescent light some animals make is a chemical reaction of luciferin, named after Lucifer, the Lightbringer, the Great Deceiver, and the Father of Lies, it’s time to trick with light!

    • Birds of Te Araroa Trail – Every Last Word
      • Natural history curator Dr Colin Miskelly completed Te Araroa Trail a year ago today. His epic mission was to count every individual bird seen and heard along the 3,257 km trail, from Cape Reinga to Bluff. He has now completed another marathon – analysing, writing-up and publishing his findings as a scientific paper. ‘Birds of Te Araroa Trail – Aotearoa New Zealand’s long pathway’ was published in the March 2025 issue of the journal Notornis, just xx days ago. Colin shares the main findings here.

    • Nancy Adams on Rakiura Stewart Island
      • Nancy Adams (1926–2007) was one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most prolific botanists and a talented artist. She produced many botanical illustrations, which were included in widely distributed and well-regarded books about the New Zealand flora. During her botanical career at the Dominion Museum (predecessor to Te Papa Tongarewa), she went

    • Palaeo introductions #1 – Palaeontology at Te Papa
      • Welcome to a blog series that introduces places, people, methods, and species that are important to palaeontological research at Te Papa and beyond. Curators Felix Marx and Alan Tennyson, along with researchers William Baker and Collection Manager Hazel Richards, start us off with a summary of what palaeontology is and how it works...

    • The elegant leek orchid – a new species for Aotearoa
      • A new species of orchid, the elegant leek orchid, has recently been described and named by botanists from Te Papa and Ōtari Native Botanic Garden. The elegant leek orchid is found from the central North Island south to the Auckland Islands but is very uncommon and classified as threatened. Curator Botany Carlos Lehnebach and Science Researcher Lara Shepherd introduce us to the new species.

    • Urban myth or reality? Did whales keep Wellington awake in the 19th Century?
      • Last year a Te Papa curator approached the library team with an intriguing question. Could we help them find more information about the story that in the 19th century whales in the Wellington Harbour were so noisy that they kept people awake at night? The curator couldn’t find any first-hand contemporary accounts, known as primary sources, from the 1800s to confirm the tale and hoped the library team might be able to help. Cataloguing and Acquisitions Librarian Kim McClintock talks about her discoveries.

    • Nancy Adams: Botanist, artist… and landscaper
      • Nancy Adams was a key player in the early decades of the Dominion Museum (predecessor to Te Papa), making substantial curatorial contributions to collections spanning from colonial history to botany and producing illustrations, now a valuable part of the Te Papa Art collection. As Lucia Adams and Margo Montes de Oca discovered during their summer research this year, traces of her influence and curatorial eye can be found not only in Te Papa’s archives but also in the outside world, specifically in the gardens by the old Dominion Museum building in Buckle Street.

    • The great New Zealand “Bug of the Year” competition 
      • Did you know that insects, spiders, and other “bugs” make up well over half of Aotearoa New Zealand’s animal diversity and that most of them are found nowhere else on planet Earth? These creatures keep our crops and flowers pollinated, our soils aerated, our streams and forests healthy, our waste

    • Research to help with the conservation of a rare native orchid yields first fruits
      • Many of New Zealand’s native orchids need our help to secure their long-term survival, but it is hard to help when we know so little about them. Master’s student Rebecca Greenwood (recipient of Te Papa Foundation Orchid Conservation Scholarship) is embarking on research to explore the pollinators and fungal-root interactions of a small group of spider orchids from south Auckland.

    • Summer fern hunting
      • The warmer months are, in many respects, the ideal time for enjoying nature, including connecting with the amazing diversity of plants around us. This time last year, Curator Botany Leon Perrie was traversing the country to get the final photos for the fern guidebook he co-authored with Patrick Brownsey.

    • A remarkable New Zealand discovery tops iNaturalist in 2024
      • With our small size and population, Aotearoa New Zealand doesn’t often top global charts. However, in 2024, a discovery from our country became the most popular observation on the iNaturalist platform, outshining over 50 million other observations made that year! Te Papa Scientist Lara Shepherd discusses a few of New Zealand’s most notable iNaturalist findings of the last year.

    • Gen AI collection descriptions – is it a pass?
      • In their first Gen AI blog, Gareth and Katie left you hanging as to how the descriptions created using Generative Artificial Intelligence turned out. Before they show an example and talk about how they assessed the content, there were a couple of discoveries they made about supplying images to the AI model.

    • A new bird for New Zealand – Horsfield’s bronze cuckoo
      • Aotearoa New Zealand is a long way from anywhere. Despite being 2,000 km from the nearest continent, vagrant land birds regularly find their way across the Tasman Sea – though some don’t quite make it. Bird curator Colin Miskelly describes the latest new species to come to grief on our

    • How do you catalogue a 150-year-old library?
      • Te Aka Matua Research Library at Te Papa currently has a collection of over 60,000 books and supports the work of Te Papa kaimahi with its wide-ranging books and resources about Aotearoa New Zealand history, Pacific cultures, mātauranga Māori, art, natural history, and museum studies. The library was first mentioned

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