New Zealand’s native species evolved in isolation from other regions for millions of years after the last land bridge to Gondwana was lost. Birds and insects dominated our ecosystems, and the ...
Skinks and geckos are the only 2 native families of lizard found in New Zealand (note that tuatara are not lizards). They are vertebrates and belong to the class Reptilia. All our native skink ...
New Zealand’s endemic tuatara is a very unusual animal. They are the only living representative of a group of reptiles known as Rhynchocephalia (sometimes known in the past as Sphenodontia) that ...
Explore this interactive to learn more about New Zealand’s unique reptiles and amphibians.
Frogs are vertebrates and belong to the class Amphibia. They are the only amphibians naturally occurring in New Zealand. All frogs have delicate, semi-permeable skin that allows them to absorb ...
iNaturalist logs hundreds of thousands of photos of flora, fauna and fungi. There are even sound recordings too. Each is described and geo located. iNaturalist is used by citizens and scientists ...
Skink Spotter NZ is interested in weather conditions that best suit skinks to be active. This information will enable the research team to consider how skink activity might change as the climate ...
FrogID is an Australian app that uses audio of frogs’ unique calls to identify various species and their locations. We can use it in New Zealand to record the location of introduced frogs. There ...
Dr Phil Bishop, from the University of Otago, talks about the threats facing our native frogs. The most significant threat in New Zealand is introduced mammalian predators. Point of interest: ...
In this activity, students have the opportunity to create a lizard-friendly habitat in the school grounds. The extension activity involves designing a suitable environment for keeping lizards in ...
Associate Professor Alison Cree, from the University of Otago, talks about the difference between being cold blooded and warm blooded. She discusses why scientists prefer to use the terms ...
In this activity, students use an interactive or paper-based Venn diagram to illustrate the key similarities and differences between skinks and geckos. By the end of this activity, students ...
Captive management is where animals are kept in captivity in some sort of enclosed space to assist survival of their species. This might be in a university lab, a zoo or a research centre. The ...
This article describes how students and Ngāti Mutunga teamed up with an ecologist to investigate frog populations – kimihia means to look for – in the Ngāti Mutunga rohe. The investigation used a ...
Dr Phil Bishop, from the University of Otago, talks about his research into metabolic bone disease. This disease only affects captive frogs, and the cure involves an elaborate UV tanning booth ...
All of our reptiles and amphibians are fully protected by law. It is illegal to collect skinks and geckos, and you need a special permit to keep them in captivity. This includes any skinks and ...
Use this interactive Venn diagram with your students to illustrate the key similarities and differences between skinks and geckos. Place each label where you think it belongs. This activity can ...
Fast skinks are assumed to be more able to escape from predators, find a mate and find food. In this video clip, Dr Kelly Hare, from the University of Otago, talks about measuring the sprint ...
Position: University Professor, University of Otago. Field: Conservation biology. Dr Phil Bishop was a professor and head of the zoology department at the University of Otago. As a herpetologist ...
Professor Alison Cree is a reproductive biologist, working in the Department of Zoology at the University of Otago. A key focus of her research is the effect of temperature on New Zealand’s ...
Frogs for the future? is a ready-to-use cross curricular teaching resource. It uses the Ministry of Education’s 2019 Connected article Kimihia Kermit by Philippa Werry. Curriculum information ‘ ...
This timeline provides look at some of the historical aspects of saving our reptiles and amphibians, the impacts on them by humans and our conversation efforts in New Zealand. 1200–1300 – Kiore ...
While employed as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Otago, Dr Kelly Hare looked at how captive management regimes could influence the health of individual skinks to promote more ...
In this activity, students work in small groups to rank a number of native reptiles and amphibians according to their conservation threat status or risk of extinction. By the end of this ...
