I am a South Island based ecologist, entomologist and Lepidopterist passionate about insect-plant relationships, biology, ecology, taxonomy, conservation and distributions. I am particularly interested in NZ Lepidoptera - butterflies and moths, but keep up-to-date and make collections of 14 Orders of insect including freshwater aquatic groups.
Along with my very young ( 8, 9, 12 and 14 years) family and slightly older family (36 and 39 years) I make numerous expeditions from local places to far-flung mountain-tops searching for special insects and plants. We know most of NZ quite well with over 4,880 enjoyable exciting wonderful and
documented field trips since 1 January 1970, and have had ten trips to the South Pacific, thirteen to Australia and ten to Asia and North America to explore the insects and their habitats. I spend my lunchtimes, after work time and weekends finding new places to explore and discover new species or new locations for our indigenous insects For example in one such lunchtime I discovered a new moth in the Christchurch Botanic Gardens in recent years, that Robert Hoare and myself described as Sabulopteryx botanica in 2019. It is a leaf miner of Teucrium - a rare small-leaved shrub growing in the forest under-storey there.
I respect databases, collections and research publications on which to base environmental decisions.
Please send me any observations, preferably with an image if you want an identification and story of an intriguing invertebrate.
With my son Hamish, we wrote and illustrated a book on the Butterflies of the South Pacific in 2012 which covered 16 countries and territories of a large part of the Pacific Ocens including New Zealand and I have co-authored five books with Neville Peat on southern NZ biodiversity including Wild Dunedin, Wild Central, Wild Rivers, Rivers Rare and Wild Fiordland.