Tiny Monsters? An Intro to the Insects of Tasmania
You don’t need to travel to the Amazon or watch the Discovery
Channel to observe incredible wildlife. You only need to sit
out in a Tasmanian garden or open a door, day or night, and it will
usually appear within arm’s reach. Take a moment to watch the
creatures before you shoo them away. Few of them are harmful,
but they are almost always interesting; with brilliant colours,
intricate patterns and confounding behaviour.
Tasmania’s island status offers unique habitats that are home
to many endemic insect species that you will see nowhere else on
Earth. All you need to do is watch. Look around you
now….maybe there are compound eyes staring back at you? These
are a collection of some of the commonly seen insects found in
Tasmanian suburbia.
Images of these and more than one thousand
other species have been collected and identified over the last
decade and presented on the website Insects of Tasmania.
Through Flickr, Tony Daley and Kristi Ellingsen became friends with a shared interest in observing and photographing different insects and their myriads of behaviour. We hope that this early stage of Insects of Tasmania provides the basis for a useful website where the community can enhance its understanding and appreciation of Tasmanian insects.
