WA Museum Researcher and UWA PhD student Stuart Lay has just returned from a high‑impact research trip to UC Berkeley, where he teamed up with world‑renowned beetle expert Professor Kip Will to level up his carabid beetle skills.
In the Berkely Lab, Stuart got hands‑on with Abacetines — a globally distributed subgroup of carabid beetles. His mission? To sort and consolidate specimens from internationally sourced frozen collections and get them ready for DNA sequencing.
That meant powering through hundreds of samples and confirming each one was correctly identified to tribe, a crucial step in mapping how beetle groups are related.
Stuart also hit some of California’s biggest insect collections, including the Bohart Museum (UC Davis), the California Academy of Sciences, and the California State Collection of Arthropods. Seeing the sheer spread of Abacetines — especially the ultra‑diverse African species — was a standout moment.
But the real game‑changer? Learning from Professor Will, particularly how spot the subtle morphological traits (body shape, etc) that separate one carabid species from another.
These fine‑scale ID skills are gold — and they’ll directly strengthen Stuart’s work on the Fortescue Marsh project, helping the WA Museum uncover and understand the hidden beetle diversity of one of the Pilbara’s most important ecosystems.
Stuart’s Berkeley training brings world-class expertise back to WA, strengthening the Museum’s beetle research. It will directly support his work on the Fortescue Marsh Biodiversity Project, a three-year partnership between the WA Museum, Fortescue and the Foundation for the WA Museum exploring the rich beetle biodiversity of this vital Pilbara ecosystem.
