13 Sep 2019

Sex and the sticky: NZ's unusual phasmids

From Nine To Noon, 9:47 am on 13 September 2019

New Zealand stick insects have proved while they can't move fast, they can move far.Three native species travelled to the other side of the world and are now living wild in southwest Britain.

But it's the reproductive activity of one of the species originally from Taranaki that's really surprised biologists. It turned from being a sexual population in New Zealand to one that became asexual, and is now a female-only population on Tresco Island off the coast of Cornwall.

It's just one of the many examples of New Zealand's quirky biota, captured in a new book by Professor Steve Trewick and his colleague Mary Morgan-Richards, called Wild Life New Zealand.