Research Summary
Sydney's National Parks, New South Wales, Australia - Urban parks provide critical ecosystem services such as pollution reduction and rainwater purification as well as their role as important recreational spaces. Unfortunately, little is known about how well parks around Sydney are functioning, which makes management of them difficult.
Dr Dieter Hochuli’s research focuses on the ecology of arthropods (a type of invertebrate, including: insects, spiders, ants and butterflies) and using these species as indictors of the health of the surrounding environment. You can help Dr Hochuli bushwalk through Sydney’s urban National Parks, collecting data on insect, ant and bird species which will help scientists and land managers to develop an appropriate model for effective urban National Park management.
Meet the Scientists
Dr Dieter Hochuli
University of Sydney
Dr Dieter Hochuli attended Monash University as an undergraduate with the intention of becoming a psychologist. Choosing zoology as another major to complete a psychology degree, Dieter was exposed to the challenges and joys of biology and an honours project studying plague locusts led to the realisation that bugs were more than an interesting novelty but that he really liked them.
Insects are a key element of virtually every terrestrial system yet insect-plant interactions are little understood and the world remains green despite being populated by millions of individuals from millions of ravenous insect species trying to find better ways of consuming plants.
After switching from locusts to caterpillars and completing his PhD Dr Hochuli commenced at The University of Sydney in 1995 where he remains a senior lecturer. His research group focuses on the ecology of terrestrial arthropods, using experimental and survey-based approaches to investigate three central themes: insect-plant interactions, community ecology and conservation biology. They approach their questions using both bottom-up and top-down approaches and hope to ultimately scale responses from individuals to landscapes in a range of systems.
Dr Hochuli still doesn't know why insects don't eat all plants.