Taxonomy

Monitoring, assessing and reporting on the ecosystem health and ecological values of freshwater and coastal waterbodies is key to the work of our ecologists. Taxonomic information is essential to understanding the impact a project might have on aquatic ecosystems and the species or communities that inhabit them. 

A thorough knowledge of the species collected from freshwater and marine habitats is fundamental to understanding and assessing the health status of these ecosystems.

Regional councils have a responsibility to monitor, enhance and protect marine and freshwater ecosystems, and are required to carry out annual State of the Environment (SOE) monitoring programmes; these involve collecting aquatic invertebrate samples from freshwater and coastal waterbodies.

Our aquatic taxonomists carefully sort through these aquatic samples to identify and count the invertebrates living on or just below the bed of streams, rivers, lakes and the sea. Their work provides crucial information on the abundance and diversity of benthic life, which is used to inform the sustainable management of freshwater and marine ecosystems. 

Understanding the invertebrate diversity and ecosystem health is often required by resource consents and directed by national policies such as the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management. Health of marine and freshwater ecosystems is an essential element of Environmental Impact Assessments. Ecological assessments for resource consent applications can also require understanding aquatic invertebrate communities.