Treasured rainforest beauty The large and beautiful Macleay’s Swallowtail Moth - Lyssa macleayi (Montrouzier, 1856), is velvety-brown with bold white features, which are particularly prominent on the ventral surface in flight. It took me eight-years, however, searching every night into the depths of this ancient rainforest as a profession, before I found my first Northern Leaf-tailed Gecko – Saltuarius cornutus (Ogilby, 1892).
NATURE'S PHARMACY As the torrid internal rivalries of the world’s oldest rainforest have played out longer than any other, so have adaptive strategies developed with ever-increasing potency and as every toxic product provides a protective purpose, no other ecosystem is as likely to reveal such a rich repository of biochemical treasures with therapeutic benefit for a host of outstanding health-related concerns. As
Maja-Jalunji has undoubtedly become the most highly-refined photosynthetic performer on the planet. Drawing red bands of light from the white-light of the sun leaves a residue of reflected light that most humans see as green; and yet, within this reflected light, blue and ultraviolet bands dominate the un-utilised portion of residual white-light. A light environment is established at the leafy, outer-surface of the
WHAT'S IN A NAME? Merely identifying the particular part of the world that occupies the centrepiece of this reporting, is confounded by a crisis of identity. Cooper Creek drains the middle of the three valleys off the eastern flank of Thornton Peak and was most likely attributed to Frederick Augustus Cooper (1834-1908), the elected Parliamentary representative for the Queensland Seat of Cook,
THE MORNING CHORUS Daintree Rainforest begins its day with a vocal changing of guard. The steady prattle of nocturnal insects, interspersed with crooning male tree-frogs and intermittent outbursts of authoritative scrub-fowl, is replaced by a growing succession of diurnal announcements. Noisy Pitta - Pitta (Pitta) versicolor (Swainson, 1825) typically cuts through the retracting darkness first, with its provocative, pitch-perfect, “Up you get!”. Yellow-spotted Honeyeater
