April Monthly Meeting – Speaker: Stuart Harris “A Boring subject: Jewel beetles of the ACT region”

A Boring subject: Jewel beetles of the ACT region A talk by Stuart Harris

Stuart Harris is a local lad who left Canberra in 1984 to serve ten years in the RAAF, both overseas and in various locations around Australia. On returning to live in Canberra an awakening of a natural kind occurred. Stuart started seeing the abundant natural beauty of our area, in particular its wonderful bird diversity. Stuart had always been a keen photographer (like his Dad) and was soon capturing high quality images of birds around the ACT and beyond. This hobby led him to accidentally discover a new species of Peacock spider (Maratus harrisi) which led to a decade of searching that tangent and helping to discover another five species! In the past decade Stuart has gained a Certificate 4 in Environmental monitoring which has led to work in that sector, primarily with birds and also landed him a job at Questacon where he still works as a science communicator. The past decade has also seen Stuart being active within the citizen science community and is an active member of the Australian Citizen Science association (ACSA). The jewel beetle ‘seed’ was planted in Stuart by another peacock spider discoverer from WA, David Knowles and on a trip with David to the Grampians in 2017 Stuart photographed his first jewel beetle. A healthy obsession of sorts kicked off then which sees Stuart scouring native shrubbery for at least half the year and his presentation ‘A boring subject’ is a reflection on the past six seasons of Buprestid research, primarily around the ACT.

Refreshments available from 7pm. Keep-cups encouraged. Non-members welcomed

Meeting starts at 7:30pm.