📋 Tender Overview
For more than two decades Dr Richard Glatz has been on a one-man mission to catalogue Kangaroo Island’s insects.
Since starting the collection in 1998, Richard has collected around 80,000 insect specimens, many of which are unique to science. To keep them safe, they are housed in a bushfire-proof building at Richard’s D’Estrees Entomology on Kangaroo Island, an isle off South Australia.
As the island’s native fauna has been isolated from the mainland for thousands of years, many have evolved to separate subspecies from their mainland counterparts. Kangaroo Island is home to South Australia’s only remaining population of Green Carpenter Bee (Xylocopa (Lestis) aerata). The Kangaroo Island Assassin Spider (Zephyrarchaea austini) was believed to be extinct until it was found following the 2019 bushfires.
As part of the Atlas of Living Australia’s (ALA) Biodiversity Data Mobilisation Program (ABDMP), Richard submitted 16,475 insect records to Australia’s biodiversity infrastructure. This nearly tripled the number of records in the ALA from Kangaroo Island.
Digitising that many specimens is no mean feat. But, with support from the program, Richard was able to ensure the thousands of specimens were digitally recorded for safekeeping for the future, and in a way that can be shared.
Richard’s dataset is one of 19 to be added to the ALA through the ABDMP. It has added more than 520,000 specimens to the ALA’s online catalogue. The annual ABDMP is designed to improve the scientific understanding of Australia’s rare and remarkable biodiversity. Applications for the 2025 round of the program begin on 24 March 2025.
Like a moth to a flame
Richard was always interested in insects, but it took until his second stint at uni to realise he could turn that into a career.
“When I was a kid, a friend and I were really interested in insects. We’d always be searching around looking for them. Not collecting or anything like that, just looking,” he said.
“But when I went to university, I wasn’t aware I could turn researching insects into a career. I ended up studying a degree in computing. But after I finished that I didn’t want to work in that field, and I ended up increasing the hours I was working at a servo.
“I thought about what I was interested in. That was biology, so I went back to uni to study an agriculture degree, mostly thinking about work opportunities. And about two years in I found I could start specialising in insects.”
Richard grew up in Riverland in rural South Australia where he first developed an interest in ecology, especially mallee eucalypt systems. Richard moved to Adelaide for university in 1988 but wanted to eventually move back to a rural area.
In one fateful university class, Richard had to make a collection of insects. At about the same time he made his first trip to Kangaroo Island where he was shocked by the mallee systems he loved. He decided his collection would document Kangaroo Island's insect fauna.
“This led to a range of discoveries, most notably the Enigma moth (Aenigmatinea glatzella) which represented an entirely new family of primitive moths (Aenigmatineidae), and its specific parasitoid wasp (Ovaustra aurantia) which represented a new genus,” Richard said.
“The rare ant-associated butterfly Ogyris halmaturina halmaturina was rediscovered after 80 years of no records and found to be a sub-species endemic to Kangaroo Island.”
For years the collection was stored in his office on the island. But he was always worried about the threat of bushfires.
The butterfly effect
The 2019 Kangaroo Island bushfires devastated the island. Two people lost their lives and almost half of the island was affected. Homes, businesses, and infrastructure were destroyed. Thousands of head of livestock and native animals were killed.
Richard’s collection was unaffected, but the tragedy confirmed his fear that the tens of thousands of specimens could easily be lost in another fire.
“It had been on my mind for some time, but the 2019 fires solidified it. It went from something in the back of my mind to something I had to act on,” he said.
“I thought ‘If I’m serious I have to build something that won’t burn down’.”
He engaged local builders who created an above-ground bunker on a standalone slab, made from double-thick hebel panels with no windows. It was finished in 2023 and now houses Richard’s collection.
