Read The Best Australian Science Writing 2012 for Free Online Page A

should continue to suspect horses, not zebras, when we hear hooves.

    Strange physics
    Travel

Blank canvas
    Corey Butler
    Walking up to the flowering mallee growing in the red dirt of South Australia’s Bon Bon Station Reserve, I was so amazed by the amassed hum of thousands of native bees that I didn’t notice the brightly coloured beetle perched on one of the flowers.
    When the insect did finally catch my eye, I took a quick snap of its shiny shell before returning my focus to the bees flocking around on the small tree ( Eucalyptus socialis ).
    It wasn’t until I returned that night to the shed where the team of scientists and naturalists were based, and showed entomologist Andy Young the picture of my ‘cute beetle’, that realisation hit us: I’d come face to face with a new species of beetle. And let it go. He looked at me as if I’d won the lottery, but lost the ticket.
    In my defence, I had tagged along as an observer, to document the week-long biodiversity field trip arranged by Bush Heritage Australia, a non-profit organisation seeking to protect flora, fauna and habitats.
    * * * * *
    Dubbed a ‘biodiversity blitz’, it was a large-scale effort to collect and classify as many species as possible. No one had asked me to keep an eye out for new beetle species.
    It’s hard to get your head around the size and scale of Bon Bon Station Reserve, an old sheep station south of Coober Pedy. At around 70km long and 30km across, it’s double the size of Auckland, New Zealand, spanning 216,700 hectares of arid South Australian outback.
    It had been a working sheep station for 130 years, mostly untouched and unexplored by science – a blank canvas of biodiversity. Bought by Bush Heritage in 2008 with funding from the Federal and South Australian governments, it has 14 different types of habitats, ranging from freshwater wetlands to salt lakes.
    But nobody knew what species it held. So in September 2010, Bush Heritage assembled a team of 20 scientists and volunteer naturalists – experts on mammals, invertebrates, reptiles and plants – to conduct a large-scale biodiversity survey. And I tagged along.
    * * * * *
    Touching down in Kingoonya on what the locals call an ‘airstrip’, 600km north of Adelaide, I realised just how isolated the site was, and why it took Bush Heritage two years to put the week-long survey together.
    Not only did all the scientists have to be shipped in by fourwheel drive, but so did the mountain of trapping and sampling equipment, scientific instruments and the food and water required to support the team.
    The base was the old farm homestead – as well as a scattering of small tents, a portable cool-room and a transportable toilet block the size of a semitrailer. A noticeboard on a verandah outlined the names, whereabouts and satellite phone numbers ofthe seven research teams currently scattered across the reserve.
    A biodiversity survey involves observing and documenting all the species (both plant and animal) in a specific location. It sounds simple, but in reality involves trapping and releasing hundreds of mammals, reptiles and insects and finding and identifying thousands of seemingly similar-looking plants.
    The project had begun two weeks before my arrival, when Jim Radford, Bush Heritage’s science and monitoring manager, arrived to select the sites the scientists would be searching.
    He had also begun digging the pitfall traps used to collect small terrestrial animals, so there would be enough time for the soil disturbance to settle, and for the animals to feel comfortable enough to venture back into the area.
    * * * * *
    Of the many different types of traps used throughout the survey, the pitfall traps were perhaps the most labour-intensive.
    They involved the construction of a miniature fly screen fence, dug down into the soil, which formed a barrier that mammals, reptiles, amphibians and insects would hopefully