A close up image of a person holding a lizard

Arianna Urso
Technical Officer, Terrestrial Zoology

Collections

  • Manages the preserved wet and dry collections of terrestrial vertebrates (birds,mammals, reptiles and amphibians)
  • Facilitates loans of WA Museum vertebrate skins, tissues, skeletons and whole organisms with other institutions
  • Identify and register new specimens into the collections
  • Maintains DNA tissue library of terrestrial vertebrates
  • Maintains and updates the electronic collection database

Services (to other bodies)

  • Provides identifications to industry, other government departments and enquiries from the public.

Research

  • Master’s dissertation on the Western Ringtail Possum
  • Honours studying phenotypic plasticity in tadpoles to the presence of invasive predators

Selected Publications

Ficetola, G.F., Barzaghi, B., Melotto, A., Muraro, M., Lunghi, E., Canedoli, C., Lo Parrino, E., Nanni, V., Silva-Rocha, I., Urso, A. and Carretero, M.A., 2018. N-mixture models reliably estimate the abundance of small vertebrates. Scientific Reports, 8(1), p.10357.