You know you could go tomorrow for an
hour in a Marine National Park and find
50 new species of marine life that
nobody's ever seen before or you could
step into the Otways Forests at night
and be surrounded by glow worms in this
magical kind of fairyland and go this is
such an amazing collection while you
listen to owls and you look up close at
the glowworms and you find out that
they're actually the maggots of fungus
gnats that make these little chandeliers
of sticky snot and they glow behind
their chandelier running their glowing
bum up and down so that the sparkle
attracts other little gnats and they
stick to the snot and then the larva
eats the snot chandeliers. Well the
stories that are embedded in one little
bug is a whole world of evolution and
adaptation and how they fit in a forest
and they've probably been doing in those
forests continuously back to the time of
polar dinosaurs when Australia was
connected to Antarctica. So the depth of
inherent information that's sitting
within those creatures that having
living examples brings all sorts of
different information that we don't
necessarily get from static collections.
But they they work very well together.
And so what's here now is our living
collection but what's in a Museum or a
Herbarium gives us the snapshots of what
was found at first contact with the
European colonisers or what was
historically found in an area.
Well I guess we could say it's worth
perhaps starting off with the fact that
climate change is not really one thing.
Climate change is a big umbrella and
what it covers is things that are
happening to our climate and also to the
ocean so sometimes it's called climate
and ocean change. But actually
human activities have changed
the composition of the atmosphere so
basically on a big broad scale we've
changed the chemistry of our planet and
how it works. So in terms of
understanding that, the Museum's
collections can help you to see where
animals live at the moment, and one big
response of warming oceans is that
animals are moving. Our marine systems
probably show it more than most in that
just the movement of warmer waters
coming around into Victoria are bringing
with them species that historically were
part of New South Wales. And
underwater New South Wales looks very
different it's dominated by these black
sea urchins that feed on seaweeds and
they almost force out the seaweeds out
of sort of shallow water depths. So they
just eat everything out you just get
left with these pink encrusting
algae, a type of seaweed that just looks
like pink rocks they're called urchin
barrens. And that forms where -  In New
South Wales it's a natural part of the
system. It's not a natural part of the
system in Victoria and Victoria has
healthy kelp reefs and kelp forests and
lots of seaweeds and all these sorts of
things. So one of the most immediate
changes is we're getting these New South
Wales species now starting to work their
way into Victoria and starting to form
these urchin barrens that clear things
out.
Things that occurred in tropical waters
in the past are actually coming further
south and we're seeing that through
being able to compare where animals
lived based on Museum collection data
with new new sightings with recent
information about where particular fish
or marine invertebrates are now found.
On land we're seeing animals starting to be
seen further south than they were
historically. So some of our staff
working closely with citizen scientists
the field naturalist clubs recently
recorded the most Southeast record of a
Red Kangaroo which is your typical
Ayers Rock central desert sort of kangaroo
the most Southeast coming in - they're
already in Northeast Victoria but
they're coming down towards Bendigo
way. We're starting to get issues like
the timings wrong. The snow's melting
early and the Mountain Pygmy-possums are
emerging two weeks before the Bogong
Moths come in on mass in the High Country
so they don't have the critical food
they need straight away it's starting to
disconnect. And the same with flowering
of plants synchronizing with emergence
of nesting and young and all
those sorts of things. You can see shifts
in flowering times for example that's
well documented from Herbarium
collections around the world. There's
been a number of studies done including
using our collection looking at shifts
in flowering times and of course they
can be of concern because if the plants
shift their flowering time and the
insects that pollinate them don't shift
their reproductive time then those
things can get out of sync and all of a
sudden what it means is the plants don't
get pollinated they don't produce seeds
and the insects that pollinate them
don't have the food resources at the
time that they would normally need them.
So you can start studying the impact of
those sorts of things through time and
that's one of the one of the great uses
of the collections. Those things are
there and really obvious to biologists
but to the general public it's not
front of mind you know you might see a
Crested Pigeon in your garden and go
that's a funny pigeon with a knot on its
head. That's a desert species that's
moving south so those sorts of things
are all around people but it's not being
translated or promoted in a way that
shows the the urgency of this issue or
the importance of it or how much we've
got to act and I think it's a really
difficult space.
The dialogue is around sea level
increase, temperature rising in the
Pacific, melting ice caps, but the human
story is missing and right across the
northern part of the Pacific in island
nations like Kiribati and the
Marshall Islands and also particularly
Solomon's they are experiencing land
loss so already five islands that I know
of in the Solomons have been lost and
the people have already moved from those
places to other islands in the Solomons.
You know there's a lot of dialogue
around that but the real story is a
sovereignty issue it's a Indigenous
rights issue and it's a human rights
issue that needs to be honored and then
there's the cultural aspect as well.
I mean that's a question that we're
thinking about very much at the moment
and supporting members of those
communities that live in Melbourne and
having connections with their culture as
its represented in our collections. We're
trying to prepare for what's coming with
climate change and getting more aware
out about the extremes of weather or
extremes of drying or extremes of flood
or risk of fire vulnerabilities and
frequency of fire and frequency of dry
lightning storms and all those sorts of
things we've got an obligation as
custodians to try and ensure that we
give that nature its best chance so
maybe we have to think in terms of
refugia or havens or put all our extra
effort into this area and get the foxes
and cats out of there and make sure it's
as healthy as possible to give it the
best bet against the pressures of this
all-pervading climate change that's
occurring across the world.
