Dick, Peter, Alison and Andy raise a toast to the success of the first two sampling cycles.  They are, no doubt, eagerly awaiting the start of the next one.  Two of the experimental logs can be seen in the background.

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Alison serves Dick a well-earned slice of log-cake topped with meringue fungi.

Monday the 16th of February 2009 marked a historic occasion for the Warra Long Term Ecological Research Site and for the Forestry CRC: the last in a 115-long series of monthly emergence trap samples was collected from the experimentally felled logs comprising the Warra Log Decay Project.  This project had been running continuously since May 1999, when it was initiated as part of a broader ARC project on saproxylic beetles shared between Forestry Tasmania and the University of Tasmania.  Over the ensuing decade, there have been two sampling cycles.  In each cycle, multiple 3 metre-long sections of each of twelve logs were fitted with emergence traps for three years each, to enable an assessment of how their saproxylic beetle assemblages varied over time and with log-type (mature or regrowth).  These logs will now be left to do their thing (rot!) for the next decade or so prior to the third round of sampling, by which time they should be housing a rather different beetle fauna.  In the mean time, Lynne Forster is working through the samples and resultant cabinetful of beetle specimens with the aim of working with Simon Grove later this year on a report on what the study has told us so far.  

To celebrate the decommissioning, several Forestry Tasmania project associates, current and former, gathered at the study-site for a decommissioning ceremony.  Dick Bashford won the award for the person with the longest continuous involvement in the project, while Alison Phillips won the award for having changed the most sample bottles in the last five years.  Tim Wardlaw and Peter Sheldon were also present, as was former FT research staff member and sample-bottle changer Andy Muirhead.  After collecting the last twelve samples and decommissioning the final four emergence traps, attendees fought with the march-flies over the rights to some delicious log-cake and non-alcoholic bubbly, kindly provided by Alison.

Biobuzz issue eight, March 2009