The citizen scientist survey of large Coleoptera on Lord Howe Island, August 2019

Abstract

A survey of large beetles, 1 cm or more in length, on Lord Howe Island was conducted by the Australian Museum in August 2019, with the help of citizen scientist volunteers. Twelve areas were sampled and the results are discussed. The survey was in late winter, a generally poor time for beetle activity, but 23 large species were found. The large beetle fauna of Blackburn Island is reviewed.

A new, but possibly extinct, species of Semanopterus Hope, 1847 from Lord Howe Island, in the southwestern Pacific Ocean (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Dynastinae)

“…Dynastinae may appear to be large and cumbersome and, therefore, unlikely dispersers, but they occur on remote oceanic islands, where there has evidently been autochthonous speciation (Endrödi 1985). Lord Howe Island, 600 km east of mainland Australia, is an example of such an island and has five recorded species of Dynastinae, one endemic Reid et al 2020).…”

“…The coleopteran fauna of the island has been sampled and described since the early 1850s, and is now estimated to include 535 species, a small percentage of which are recent arrivals through human agency (Reid et al 2020). The Australian Museum has been at the forefront of collecting the fauna of Lord Howe and the coleopteran collection from there includes 42 drawers of pinned specimens and thousands of specimens stored in ethanol.…”

Ctenostegus hansoni sp. nov., a new species of spider wasp endemic to Lord Howe Island (Hymenoptera: Pompilidae)

“…Most of the invertebrate fauna is either poorly documented or awaiting formal recognition (Hutton et al 2007). Rats constitute a severe threat to the native species and have severely affected or extirpated populations of several large native invertebrates (Priddel et al 2003;Reid et al 2020). Conservation efforts including pest eradication and biodiversity recovery programs are essential to mitigate the detrimental impact of introduced species on LHI's native fauna and flora.…”

“…2003; Reid et al . 2020). Conservation efforts including pest eradication and biodiversity recovery programs are essential to mitigate the detrimental impact of introduced species on LHI's native fauna and flora.…”

Data-Driven Islanding Detection Using a Principal Subspace of Voltage Angle Differences

“…A recent event in Great Britain's power system exemplifies the importance of reliable islanding detection schemes in systems containing distributed generation. A lightning strike triggered a sequence of events leading to a loss of power supply to approximately 1 million customers [5]. One of the events which contributed to the loss of supply was the operation of islanding protection schemes installed at distributed generators, namely vector shift and rate of change of frequency (ROCOF) protection.…”