Christmas beetles seem to be on the decline. In the past, millions of these beetles would be flying around in December and January. There are 35 known species and Sydney University and Invertebrates Australia need the public’s help to track the population of the beetles.
How can you help? If you see a suspected Christmas beetle, take a photo and upload it to iNaturalist, a biodiversity database with an automated system to check whether it is indeed a Christmas beetle. In fact, you need 4 photos, the top, bottom, back and rear of the beetle. iNaturalist also collects geographical information so that we know where and when the sighting occurred. To submit your photos, go to https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/christmas-beetle-count
So become a citizen scientist and help find out why we are not seeing as many Christmas beetles. At the time of writing this article, there were 7246 citizen scientists and 14,740 observations. Let’s see if we can add some counts from North Arm Cove and district.
When I was a kid they were…
When I was a kid they were everywhere around the Christmas period. Nowadays I hardly see any at all. It will be interesting to find out why they are declining.