Bushwalker takes photo of rare bug in the wild

Judy Allen has taken the first known image of the Myremeleon Houstoni dragonfly in the wild. (ABC Mildura Swan Hill: Sarah Buchecker) Judy Allen has taken the only known photograph of the Myrmeleon houstoni insect species in the wild. The photos, taken near Mildura, have given new insight into the distribution of the species across Australia. The CSIRO says about 70 per cent of biodiversity records in Australia come from citizen scientists. Link copiedShareShare articleWhen Judy Allen took her camera along for a bushwalk through some scrub near Red Cliffs last February, she had little idea she would soon make an unexpected scientific discovery. The Mildura resident is a regular user of the iNaturalist website, and often documents the plants and insects in her area to gain some expert insight into her local surrounds. So when she took a photo of an Antlion bug in the nearby town of Red Cliffs, she did not think too much of it. The first photo taken of the Myrmeleon houstoni species in the wild. (Supplied: Judy Allen) But after she uploaded the image online, an expert informed her she had taken a rare wild photo of a Myrmeleon houstoni, an insect that has never been officially photographed in the wild. "I was taking photos of plants, but when you're out in the bush doing bushwalks, you just find other things," she said. Ms Allen said she was "blown away" by the response to her upload, which she caught attached to a twig. She said it had not been hard to spot; the insect was perched on a bush at eye level, almost directly on her path. Not to be outdone, Ms Allen's daughter Fiona has since also photographed a Myrmeleon houstoni in a different part of the Mallee. On iNaturalist, the mother and daughter duo are the only people to have photographed the Myrmeleon houstoni in the wild. Judy Allen was contacted by an author to use her image in a book on lacewing insects. (ABC Mildura Swan Hill: Sarah Buchecker) Cameron Slayter, project manager of biodiversity initiatives at the CSIRO, said while the Myrmeleon houstoni was found across the country, the only official photos known to exist were of the bugs in museums. "No-one's actually ever publicly photographed one before," he said. Mr Slatyer said Myrmeleon houstoni lived in sandy areas, where they formed conical burrows to trap ants. The Myrmeleon houstoni photographed at home by Judy Allen after being caught. (Supplied: Judy Allen) "If an ant comes along, the larva actually spit grains of sand or dirt at the ant until it falls down the cone and once it's in the cone, it can't get back out," he said. "Then the larva reaches up and eats it … but at a certain point in their life cycle, they then pupate and emerge into an insect that looks very similar to a dragonfly." Mr Slatyer said there were records of the species throughout Australia, but there were gaps in the data. "It is actually filling quite a big data gap that we had in the distribution of the species," he said. "There's plenty of room for getting more records because after all, there are only 130 records of this species and if you compare that to, say, the Australian magpie, which has three million records, you get some idea of the difference in information that we have about the species." Cameron Slatyer says citizen scientists are helping fill data gaps while providing information on how many species of insects live in Australia. (Supplied: Cam Slatyer) Mr Slatyer said citizen scientists drove Australia's fastest-growing biological dataset, contributing roughly 70 per cent of the 180 million records in the Atlas of Living Australia "I check between 200 and 400 new records a week where the species name is literally not in our list of Australian species … and most of those are coming from citizen scientists," he said. Anyone can upload images of flora and fauna to the iNaturalist website, and experts will weigh in on which species is in the image. (ABC Mildura Swan Hill: Sarah Buchecker) He said it was no longer rare for amateurs to photograph a species for the first time. "Australia's got about 233,000 species known to science, or western science, and there's estimated to be about 500,000 species in Australia," he said. He encouraged anyone wanting to get out and start taking photos to make sure they got clear, close photos to help experts easily identify species. Copy linkFacebookX (formerly Twitter)PromotionTop StoriesDelta Goodrem takes fourth spot in Eurovision 2026 as Bulgaria winsLIVE

Bushwalker takes photo of rare bug in the wild

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