Long Days of Summer

Long day today, 5am start at Uni preparing the glasshouse for a new experiment. Last Autumn I collected kawakawa fruit from the Banks Peninsula, germinated the seedlings and now these young plants have transformed into one meter tall semi-mature trees. Result.





Now, I am taking these plants as well as some others donated from a nursery in Auckland and a Master’s project in Nelson, and packing them away in insect-proof mesh (a.k.a. curtain off-cuts!)



Now that the plants are all self- enclosed it is time to add a single caterpillar. These are moth larvae that I have collected from my field sites whilst surveying and in giving them their own plant I should be able to analyse how much they eat in their lifetime. I plan to place a number of caterpillars collected from Auckland on plants grown from Nelson and Banks Peninsula to see if herbivory rates change (and vice versa). This may indicate how species interactions may differ as insects move into new habitats. Anyhow, time for me to stop for the day, I have to have some energy to collect the last group of caterpillars in Akaroa tomorrow.