Zachary Ngow 魏霆鋒

Lake Rotomanu closed to motorised boats after discovery of invasive clam Taranaki Regional Council said it was unknown how the clams got into the lake, but the focus now was making sure they did not spread to other Taranaki lakes or rivers.

Uh oh... Corbicula has spread byond the Waikato River to Lake Rotomanu in Taranaki.

www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

two examples of the misappropriation of resources in a university setting, from this week alone

(1) treating grant overheads explicitly as uni income, tracking it as "revenue" & a yearly "key performance indicator"

[overheads are meant to pay for real facilities/admin costs; they are not revenue!]

Flower likened to 'cancer' for environment still sold at nurseries The colourful flowers of gazanias might attract you to buy them at a nursery but it is worth considering whether you are getting an invasive weed causing havoc to our landscapes.

You can still buy them here at Bunnings and Mitre 10 as well as many other nurseries. www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2...

Hey anyone at #mpi or #biosecuritynz. We do wasp genomics. I reckon I could tell you in about 24 hours if these invasive yellow legged #hornets you have found in Auckland are sisters, or a larger invasion. For free. Hit me up now!

put out durian lollies for Halloween 👹 surprisingly they all got taken, though one was spat out onto the driveway 😂

Also has the NZ media even reported on the OIA by NZATE (I think it was) that returned evidence that David Seymour logged in to a Google Doc of the English curriculum rewrite and started making his own edits to it, completely outside the chain of responsibility and Ministry procedures?

our govt wants to spend 327 times more on a single road ($18b) than they are currently spending yearly on all of basic science in new zealand ($55m) #nzpol

Thankfully this one isn't in New Zealand! Similar to Madagascar ragwort but more narrow leaved. Seems to grow in similar places to gravel groundsel rather than MR.

I cannot believe our work is finally out there and in @journal-evo.bsky.social ! This was an enormous group effort!

We provide an updated estimate of the number of buzz pollinated angiosperm species, genera, and families, look at consequences for diversification, number of transitions, and more!

Losing the land: Farmers call for urgent action on toxic ragwort threat Tests confirmed M. ragwort is more toxic and invasive than its lookalike Gravel groundsel.

Madagascar ragwort/fireweed (Senecio madagascariensis) is definitely getting traction in the news. Quite a headache of a weed.

www.nzherald.co.nz/northern-adv...

maybe it's thinking of Senecio skirrhodon???

Deep in the reeds: Australian scientists put dollar figure on floating wetlands’ global water quality savings ‘We’ve worked out that no matter how hard you engineer something, nature filters everything much better than anything else’, says academic

Deep in the reeds: Australian scientists put dollar figure on floating wetlands’ global water quality savings 🌏

www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Schematic model of the enemy spillover framework showing positive (black) and negative (red) feedbacks, along with context dependence. The framework proposes that the intrinsic fast-growth traits of many successful invasive plants lead to strong positive effects on generalist enemies, which then impact relatively more strongly on more K-selected native plants.

#TansleyInsight: When the novelty wears off: enemy spillover drives #plant #invasion success

Ian Dickie, Warwick Allen and Lauren Waller 👇

📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

#LatestIssue #PlantScience

Is it silly to think that New Zealand's science funding changes may yield too much influence to one person?

newsroom.co.nz/2025/10/16/f...

Regulatory Standards Bill: Select Committee Report: 166,000 submission total 0.7% supported 0.6% unclear 98.7% opposed AUTHORISED BY DUNCAN WEBB MP, PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS WELLINGTON

The select committee report on the Regulatory Standards Bill is in.
📝166,000 submissions.
❌98.7% opposed.
Yet National are going to continue supporting it.
🗣New Zealand could not have been louder, but Luxon still isn’t listening.

bloody hell hope that changes...

Botany should be taught as a life skill at High School because I can tell from here with the rushes and the bright green isolepis (indicating it is very wet) that you wouldn't want to drive a ute in here.

Magic flora Philip Garnock-Jones has spent more than a decade photographing our native flowers as they’ve never been shown before: in luscious, three-dimensional detail.

Magic Flora
Philip Garnock-Jones has spent more than a decade photographing our native flowers as they’ve never been shown before: in luscious, three-dimensional detail.

www.nzgeo.com/stories/magi...

Keep starting and not continuing books, Men in Love (Irvine Welsh) Tarzan Presley (Nigel Cox), She's A Killer (Kirsten McDougall, audiobook) and now Bleeding Edge (Thomas Pynchon). Probably will finish them all eventually... 😵‍💫

Paper mulberry / aute plant showing leaves and female flower buds (?)

There are a few at the Hamilton Gardens in the corner of Te Parapara - see photo taken last year. I think it is female?

Watch: Government announces shake-up of earthquake strengthening laws A new "risk-based" approach to earthquake strengthening will allegedly save building owners more than $8.2 billion across the country.

'we completely blew out what the value of a life was'. Almost every commentary I've read or heard on the new earthquake regulations has been about the dollar savings to property owners.

www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

Labour party leader Chris Hipkins talks to media on NZ not recognising Palestine as a lone state Labour party leader Chris Hipkins talks to media about the government’s Palestine decision where NZ chose not to recognise Palestine as a lone state. Video \ Dean Purcell

“This isn’t just being out of sync with our friends. It is morally reprehensible to be turning our back when we see an unfolding genocide.”

A welcome clear statement from Chris Hipkins.

www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/labour-pa...

Cannot remember species, maybe mingimingi? Small white flowers

tree fuchsia flowers

poroporo flower

kowhai flowers

flowers are out 🌸🌺🌼🏵️

Four books: Mother River by Can Xue, Let the Boys Play by Nicholas John Turner, Dry Milk by Huo Yan, The Skeleton's Holiday by Leonora Carrington

The same books, showing spine with the baby's head in background. 🇳🇿📚

Order came in, baby for scale (thanks @thebooksdesk.bsky.social for the link)

Reti earmarks $70m of new agency's budget for AI commercialisation grants

new zealand government reaching new heights of stupidity

next year our public dollars will go more to AI grants ($70 million) than all investigator-initiated basic science combined ($56 million in the Marsden fund)

#votefordotterels

A ginger cat named Gus

Gus longboy

Hutu (Ascarina lucida) is the first New Zealand native plant shown to have heterodichogamy (explained in ALT) and also the first report of it for Chloranthaceae. Most heterodichogamoous plants are wind pollinated and monoecious. Details in latest @ijpsjournal.bsky.social (see above post)

Interesting that there weren't more exotics in the seed rain!