What is Macquarie Island’s rarest plant? One contender for the title is Subantarctic bedstraw or Antarctic bedstraw (Galium antarcticum), a small creeping herb with tiny delicate pinkish flowers. The species was first recorded in 1983, growing near Skua Lake around Read More …
Where did Macquarie Island’s plants come from? Being hundreds of kilometres from its nearest neighbours, all of the plants must have been transported to this tiny speck of land in the ocean since it rose from the seabed less than Read More …
If ever one needed an excuse to post pictures of penguins, yesterday was World Penguin Day. Four penguin species breed on Macquarie Island. King penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus) can reach a metre tall and can dive to deeper than 300 metres. Read More …
Walking is getting harder on Macquarie Island. Previously short-cropped grass only centimetres tall is now a knee-deep meadow of grass matted with mosses and herbs. This is one of the initial observations from last week’s field trip to the Subantarctic Read More …
Just arrived back at the station via helicopter. Unfortunately we lost about half of our planned fieldwork time: operations on the island are winding up early due to forecast bad weather, and earlier in the week we had two days Read More …
We landed on Macquarie Island yesterday and spent a few hours setting up and testing an automatic weather station. Now it is ready to be airlifted to over 300 m elevation on the plateau, ready for installation. We’ll find out Read More …
How much has the vegetation changed in the past two years? We’ll soon see. Finally it’s time to do some field work. The Aurora Australis is loaded up and heading south. In 3 days time we will be at Macquarie Read More …
My research project is looking at vegetation change on Macquarie Island. Since rabbits were eradicated from the island in 2011 the plants which had been subject to intensive grazing by these pest animals are now growing back. Nobody knows what Read More …
Macquarie Island’s total of 43 native vascular plant species is low by most standards – some Tasmanian National Parks of similar size have more than ten times this diversity.* But amongst the Subantarctic islands, none come close to Macca’s species Read More …
There are no trees. No shrubs even. The tallest plants are ‘megaherbs’, which can just reach over head height. This is the unusual assemblage of plants which inhabit Macquarie Island. In contrast to the Northern Hemisphere tundra where low-growing shrubs Read More …