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The Conversation
The Conversation
Matthew H. Holden, Lecturer, School of Mathematics and Physics, The University of Queensland

We thought we’d find 200 species living in our house and yard. We were very wrong

Dot-underwing moth (_Eudocima materna_) found in the researchers' yard. Matthew Holden, CC BY-NC

We are biodiversity researchers – an ecologist, a mathematician and a taxonomist – who were locked down together during the COVID pandemic. Being restricted to the house, it didn’t take long before we began to wonder how many species of plants and animals we were sharing the space with. So we set to work counting them all.

We guessed we would find around 200–300, and many of our colleagues guessed the same.

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