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natural history

This section on the natural history of Blue Tier has its origins in a book published by Sarah Lloyd The Blue Tier - a natural history, available from Friends of the Blue Tier. We acknowledge Sarah's encouragement and considerable help with identification, especially of fungi and the bryophytes. She has contributed many of the images as well.
Todd Dudley of North-east Bioregional Network has provided regular assistance identifying the flowering plants.
We are grateful to Central North Field Naturalists for loan of two microscopes used in identifying and photographing the bryophytes.

For those not familiar with the Blue Tier this is temperate rain forest country, the upper reaches of which are partly covered in old growth myrtle, sassafras and celery-top pine as well as regeneration from bushfires and the ravages of human disturbance from a century ago. Dominant vegetation on the lower slopes range from white-top stringy-bark and mountain ash down to the drier areas of brown-top stringybark, white gum and even a few peppermints at the bottom of 3-Notches track. This is complemented with a wide diversity of understorey types including some not usually associated with rainforest.

This is work in progress which we are confident will never be completed. There are ambitions of expanding the categories listed below to include at least some members of most life-forms found on the Blue Tier but fear our grasp will fall far short of our reach ...

We are not certain that our identification is always correct to the species level but we have taken pains to ensure that obvious errors have not crept into these pages.

2009/05/10 - We are placing all images with the 'Copyright (year) bluetier.org' notice into the public domain. You may use them for any purpose you wish, including commercial use, without seeking further permission.
Third party images on this site without the specific notices above belong to their respective owners and retain full copyright protection.
Our latest images now display the 'Public Domain' symbol.

 

We use Whittaker's 1969 division of life into 5 kingdoms which is admittedly not universally accepted - but then, none of them are. The formal classification below provides some idea of the relationships amongst differing life forms. The last two, genus and species (e.g. Homo sapiens) is sufficient to identify any organism.

• Kingdom (Animalia)
  • Phylum (Chordata)
    • Class (Mammalia)
      • Order (Primates)
        • Family (Hominidae)
          • Genus (Homo)
            • Species (sapiens)

• MONERA - bacteria
•  
• PROTISTA (includes kelps)
  • Chlorophyta etc. - algae
  • Myxomycota - plasmoid slime moulds
  •  
• FUNGI
  • Common fungi - (ascomycota and basidiomycota)
  • Lichens (obligate symbiosis between fungus and alga)
  •  
• PLANTAE
  • Bryophytes
    • Anthocerotophyta (hornworts)
    • Bryophyta (mosses)
    • Marchantiophyta (liverworts)
  • Other
    • Pterophyta (ferns)
    • Psilotophyta (whisk ferns) - fork ferns
    • Lycophyta (club mosses)
    • Coniferophyta (gymnosperms) - Celery-top Pine
    • Anthophyta (angiosperms - flowering plants)
      • Monocotyledons
      • Dicotyledons
  •  
• ANIMALIA (METAZOA)
  • Anthropoda
    • Insecta (true insects)
    • Malacostraca (lobsters, crabs etc.)
  • Chordata (vertebrates)
    • Amphibia (amphibians including frogs)
    • Aves (birds)
    • Mammalia (mammals)
    • Reptilia (reptiles)
  • Mollusca (mollusks)
    • Gastropoda (snails)
  • Rotifera
    • Bdelloid rotifers)

Web References
- Introduction to taxonomy
- Florida Nature provides some useful pages on the taxonomic relationship amongst life forms.
- Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) promises to be the richest web source of images relating to Australian natural history.

2010/05/24 - We would like to credit use of the free 'Extended Depth of Field' plugin for ImageJ software for improving focus depth of some micrographs.
2011/07/22 - We have started using the free Hugin program for image stacking.

Page url: http://www.bluetier.org/nature/

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