高清福利片

鈥淧eople remember them being around in huge numbers around Christmas, but that just doesn鈥檛 seem to happen anymore, particularly on the east coast of Australia,鈥� said Associate Professor Tanya Latty, an entomologist at the School of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Sydney.

So where are the Christmas beetles now? Are climate change and urbanisation to blame?

Christmas beetles (Anoplognathus聽spp) are a group of iconic Australian insects: large, colourful beetles that were once bountiful in December and January. Usually 20鈥�30 mm long, they are members of the scarab family that are noisy and clumsy fliers; and they are an important food source for birds like currawongs, magpies as well as wasps and possums.

Scientists suspect that they are in decline, but there鈥檚 no formal monitoring program, so they just don鈥檛 know how bad the decline really is, and whether it is affecting all of the 35 species.

鈥淲e just don鈥檛 have enough information 鈥� the data is just too patchy, or too geographically sporadic,鈥� she said. 鈥淲e need to collect data on Christmas beetle populations in order to understand where they are, and in what quantities. And we can only do that with the help of the public.鈥�

Associate Professor Latty is calling for volunteer 鈥榗itizen scientists鈥� to join the University鈥檚聽 Christmas Beetle Count, by downloading an app to their mobile phones or jumping on the web. The app, iNaturalist, allows users to instantly capture a picture and location of each Christmas beetle they see, and the app helps identify the species.聽聽

鈥淥nly with this kind of large-scale baseline data, collected by thousands of Australians around the country, will we be able to figure out if they are really declining, and eventually, why,鈥� Associate Professor Latty added. 鈥淲e really need the public鈥檚 help to track the population of Christmas beetles if we are going to identify which species may be at risk, and where large populations still exist.鈥�

Ahead of the citizen science project, Associate Professor Latty will be hosting an introductory Zoom video webinar on Wednesday at 6pm AEDT; to register go to . The project officially kicks off on Saturday 26 November 2022, and anyone downloading the iNaturalist app can take part, by searching for Christmas Beetle Count and signing up. (The website )

The Christmas Beetle Count is being undertaken in collaboration with , a non-profit founded after the Black Summer bushfires of 2019/20 which supports the science and conservation of Australian invertebrates such as spiders, crustaceans, insects, and any creatures without a backbone.聽