Past Speaker Reports

Ross Coupland (left) presented some fascinating images and videos of many different types of animals that he’s found and studied using the thermal monocular. It was interesting to see how close one could observe animals when no visible light is used, allowing lengthy, unobtrusive observations of natural behaviour. Of particular interest were the endothermic Fulgorid planthoppers Desudaboides melindae, for which Ross managed to establish the life history of the nymphs. This discovery would not have been possible without the use of new thermal technology as the sub-adult insects are extremely cryptic and occur on unrelated host trees to the adults. Ross uses a Hikmicro OWL OQ35 the details of this instrument can be found here: Hikmicro OWL OQ35

The second part of the talk was presented by Kieran Aland (left).  PAM (passive acoustic monitoring) allows detection and monitoring of a wide range of sound-producing taxa. Frontier Labs (ecology@frontierlabs.com.au) is a local designer and manufacturer of the BAR range of PAM recorders. These recorders are robust and user-friendly and collect high-quality audio for extended periods on a single battery charge. These recordings can be assessed in a variety of ways and Kieran Aland (left) demonstrated the use of Raven Lite software (Cornell Ornithology Labs) to rapidly screen recordings for the ‘signature’ calls of several species. Both talks were very well received and generated many questions and further discussion.

Further reading:  Drones with thermal cameras