Aussie mum's 'magical' discovery covering backyard trees: 'Thousands of them'
Incredible footage of the 'amazing' sight in the woman's Hunter Valley paddock has even stunned experts.
An Aussie mum has made a “magical” — and nowadays quite rare — discovery in her backyard. Kimmy Stokes was walking around her 600 acre property in NSW’s Hunter Valley earlier this week when she “stumbled upon” thousands of Christmas beetles covering “almost every tree” in a paddock.
“I have not seen anything like it before,” she told Yahoo News Australia. “I see them almost every year but never this many — [we’re] maybe lucky to see 50 a year around Christmas.”
Incredible video footage shows mounds of the native insects hanging from branches, stacked on top of each other, “eating the leaves and eating everywhere”.
Chatting again on Friday, Ms Stokes told Yahoo the Christmas beetles appeared to have settled in. “They’re still here. I’ve been watching them daily and photographing them too, trying to gather as much information as I can. There a few different species there,” she revealed.
Incredible Christmas beetle sighting stuns Aussies
The “amazing” sight has stunned Aussies online, with many comparing it to “the good old days”. Others said the mum was clearly “very lucky”.
It even made one expert green with envy.
“I am so jealous, I’m not going to lie,” Associate Professor Tanya Latty told Yahoo News Australia while laughing. “I would love to see Christmas beetle numbers like that. It would make my life.”
The beetles in the Ms Stokes’ clip are feeding and mating, she confirmed. “Adult Christmas beetles are herbivores so they feed on plants particularly gum trees,” Ms Latty said, adding the “sighting” is “really valuable” for research.
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Push for more Christmas beetle data
Invertebrates Australia in collaboration with the University of Sydney launched the Christmas Beetle Count in 2022 to gather more data about the species following years of concerns they are at risk of decline or extinction.
Historically, Christmas beetles are kind of known to rest in large numbers on the same tree, but it seems to be more unusual now, Ms Latty said.
“Nobody was really keeping detailed scientific data so we don’t have numbers or population data from the past. All we can really do is go by people’s memories and little bits that we can pull out of things like newspapers,” she explained.
There are more than 12,000 sightings recorded to date. “[It’s] just glorious, like fantastic amounts of data. Now, we need more,” Ms Latty said. Aussies are encouraged to log their Christmas beetle sightings on iNaturalist.
The more reports received, the sooner experts can start creating strategies to get the population back to where it “really ought to be”.
According to preliminary information, some Christmas beetle species have fallen victim to urbanisation.
“Habitat loss [is] almost certainly a big driver. It’s possible that climate change is also a problem, particularly because the larvae of Christmas beetles lives in the soil, so they’re pretty sensitive to long-term, multi-year droughts that make the soil really hard and dry.”
Earlier this week, “hundreds” of the colourful creatures swarmed homes in west Brisbane during a heatwave, which can speed up the beetle larvae develop.
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