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Flystrike remains an important animal health issue on New Zealand sheep farms. To date no useful predictive tool to assist farmers to develop control options has been available. The aim of this study was to use National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) virtual climate station data in New Zealand to develop a weather-based model to accurately predict the presence of Lucilia spp. on sheep farms throughout New Zealand. Three LuciTrap® baited fly traps were positioned on each of eight sheep farms throughout New Zealand (5 in the North Island and 3 in the South Island). The traps were put out for both the 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 seasons. They were emptied each week and the flies morphologically identified; with the counts of Lucilia cuprina and L. sericata combined as Lucilia spp. The count data for Lucilia spp. for each week of trapping was transformed into a binary outcome and a generalised linear mixed effects models fitted to the data, with farm as a random effect. The dependent variable was Lucilia spp. flies caught, yes or no, and the independent variables were mean weekly climate variables from the nearest NIWA virtual climate station to that farm. The model was trained on the 2018-2019 catch data and tested on the 2019-2020 catch data. A cut point was identified which maximised the model's ability to correctly predict whether Lucilia spp. were present or not for the 2019-2020 catch data, and the sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, and area under the curve (AUC) of the model calculated. The final model included just 3 significant variables, mean weekly 10 cm soil temperature, mean weekly soil moisture index, and mean weekly wind speed at 10 m. Mean weekly 10 cm soil temperature accounted for 64.7% of the variance explained by the model, mean weekly soil moisture index 34.7% and mean weekly wind speed at 10 m only 0.6%. The results showed that the predictive model had a sensitivity of 0.93 (95% CI = 0.80-0.98) and a specificity of 0.75 (95% CI = 0.62-0.85), using a cut point for the probability of Lucilia spp. being present on farm = 0.383. This model provides New Zealand farmers with a tool which will allow them to know when Lucilia spp. flies will likely be present and thus more accurately plan their interventions to prevent flystrike., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare no conflict of interest in the collection and development of this model. PTJB was a PhD student during this project., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

The New Zealand Oceanographic Institute (NZOI) laid the foundations for the interactive study of water masses, seabed geology and biota of the Southwest Pacific from 1954 until the demise of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research in 1992. It was one of the first multidisciplinary marine sciences organisations outside the US and UK. With its brief extending from the seas around New Zealand’s Island Territories near the equator to its Antarctic Ross Dependency, emphasis was always on understanding processes. James Brodie helped set up NZOI, became its first director and initiated many of the mechanisms for its success using a very flat, interactive management style. Initially, equipment, seagoing facilities and accommodation were primitive, but all improved significantly with the acquisition of a custom-build ship and new laboratories. NZOI’s legacy was a huge resource of knowledge that continues to be used within the marine programmes of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research and worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here we present distributional records for Tanaidacea specimens collected during several Antarctic expeditions to the Ross Sea: the Italian PNRA expeditions ("V", 1989/1990; "XI", 1995/1996; "XIV", 1998/1999; "XIX", 2003/2004; "XXV", 2009/2010) and the New Zealand historical (New Zealand Oceanographic Institute, NZOI, 1958-1961) and recent ("TAN0402 BIOROSS" voyage, 2004 and "TAN0802 IPY-CAML Oceans Survey 20/20" voyage, 2008) expeditions. Tanaidaceans were obtained from bottom samples collected at depths ranging from 16 to 3543 m by using a variety of sampling gears. On the whole, this contribution reports distributional data for a total of 2953 individuals belonging to 33 genera and 50 species. All vouchers are permanently stored in the Italian National Antarctic Museum collection (MNA), Section of Genoa (Italy) and at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA Invertebrate Collection), Wellington (New Zealand). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) Invertebrate Collection is a Nationally Significant Collection consisting of around 300,000 marine invertebrate specimen jars housed at the NIWA Greta Point campus in Wellington, New Zealand. Our collection holdings include samples from New Zealand, Antarctic and Pacific waters and represent over 70 years of collecting and is still growing. We estimate approximately 40% of our collections are registered and digitally accessible (about 127,000 records since digital registering began in 2004), with most of our unregistered material being historical collections. We are the repository for several important historical collections, one of the largest being the former New Zealand Oceanographic Institute (NZOI) collection, a taxonomically diverse and a geographically wide-ranging collection which occurred from the 1950's to the early 1990's. Associated specimen information such as station data and taxonomic identification for these historical collections are managed by NIWA staff and are in the form of Microsoft Excel and Access spreadsheets, NIWA and NZOI Biodiversity Memoirs, and online via the NIWA cruise and station database. These data are manually collated and registered into our Specify collections software specimen database which offers a unified and comprehensive data repository for our historical specimens, therefore greatly improving data accessibility. To expedite the availability of data and improve access to specimens for our users we are focusing on the registration of both important historical and taxonomic collections, and streamlining the registration of specimens in the field onboard NIWA's research vessel Tangaroa. Our field registration and curation techniques have been fine-tuned over the years and now we are capturing data directly into a shipboard copy of Specify in the sorting lab on the ship, printing labels with a thermal printer, and importing data back to our home version following the end of the voyage using Specify's Workbench feature. This process reduces the time spent double-handling specimens and entering data off paper record sheets and allows the capture of data directly into our database immediately after collection and sorting onboard the ship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]