Ants are one of the most important faunal groups in Australia and are widely used as bioindicators in land monitoring and assessment programs. The Ants of Northern Australia will help in the identification of the 1500 or more ant species occurring in monsoonal Australia, an area which encompasses most of the northern third of the continent. Until now, no book has described the northern Australian ant fauna below genus level. Such a treatment is required to support and promote the numerous ecological studies involving ants, especially in the context of their use as bioindicators. The Ants of Northern Australia features original analyses of genera at the species-group level, and so has relevance throughout Australia. It treats all major species that have been described, as well as numerous others that remain undescribed.

Helps in the identification of the 1500 or more ant species occurring in monsoonal Australia.

Annotation. The only complete listing of the entire Australian ant genera.

Northern Australia stands out as one of the largest natural areas remaining on Earth - alongside such global treasures as the Amazon rainforests, the boreal conifer forests of Alaska and Canada, and the polar wilderness of Antarctica. Nature remains in abundance in 'the North'. Its intact tropical savannas, rainforests, and free flowing rivers provide a basis for much of the economic activity and the quality of life for residents of the area. THE NATURE OF NORTHERN AUSTRALIA details the latest science on the Northern environment. With increasing debate over the future of Australias often forgotten North, this is a timely examination of its environmental significance, the ecological processes that make it function, and the economies that are compatible with maintaining healthy communities and people and healthy country into the future.

This engaging volume explores the management of fire in one of the world’s most flammable landscapes: Australia’s tropical savannas, where on average 18% of the landscape is burned annually. Impacts have been particularly severe in the Arnhem Land Plateau, a centre of plant and animal diversity on Indigenous land. Culture, Ecology and Economy of Fire Management in North Australian Savannas documents a remarkable collaboration between Arnhem Land’s traditional landowners and the scientific community to arrest a potentially catastrophic fire-driven decline in the natural and cultural assets of the region – not by excluding fire, but by using it better through restoration of Indigenous control over burning. This multi-disciplinary treatment encompasses the history of fire use in the savannas, the post-settlement changes that altered fire patterns, the personal histories of a small number of people who lived most of their lives on the plateau and, critically, their deep knowledge of fire and how to apply it to care for country. Uniquely, it shows how such knowledge and commitment can be deployed in conjunction with rigorous formal scientific analysis, advanced technology, new cross-cultural institutions and the emerging carbon economy to build partnerships for controlling fire at scales that were, until this demonstration, thought beyond effective intervention.

Northern Australia is one of few tropical places left on Earth in which biodiversity—and the ecological processes underpinning that biodiversity—is still relatively intact. However, scientific knowledge of that biodiversity is still in its infancy and the region remains a frontier for biological discovery. The butterfly and diurnal moth assemblages of the area, and their intimate associations with vascular plants (and sometimes ants), exemplify these points. However, the opportunity to fill knowledge gaps is quickly closing: proposals for substantial development and exploitation of Australia’s north will inevitably repeat the ecological devastation that has occurred in temperate southern Australia—loss of species, loss of ecological communities, fragmentation of populations, disruption of healthy ecosystem function and so on—all of which will diminish the value of the natural heritage of the region before it is fully understood and appreciated. Written by several experts in the field, the main purpose of this atlas is to compile a comprehensive inventory of the butterflies and diurnal moths of northern Australia to form the scientific baseline against which the extent and direction of change can be assessed in the future. Such information will also assist in identifying the region’s biological assets, to inform policy and management agencies and to set priorities for biodiversity conservation.

Early research on ant-plant interactions in Australia was largely confined to the economically important problem of ants harvesting surface-sown pasture seed (e. g. Campbell 1966). The report by Berg (1975) of widespread myrmecochory in Australia, and a burst of overseas research, stimulated research on a range of ant-plant interactions in Australia. This book summarizes such research and presents reeent and current work on seed harvesting, myrmecochory, ant-epiphytes, extrafloral nectaries, ant-plant-homopteran systems, and the influence of vegetation on ant faunas. I hope that it will encourage further work in these and related areas, and that the review and bibliography of ant-plant interactions in the rest ofthe world will serve as a useful source for those entering the field. The richness of Australia's flora and ant fauna render it a particularly interesting continent for the study of interactions between them. As immediately apparent from the list of contents, ant-seed interactions are particularly significant in Australia. This is not surprising for a relatively dry continent bearing a largely sc1erophyllous plant cover. Future research, however, especially in the tropical north, is like1y to reveal further types of interaction, perhaps corresponding to those characteristic of the tropics elsewhere, or perhaps distinctively Australian. Some of the chapters have been shortened and modified considerably from the original manuscripts, but the ideas and results presented are, of course, those of the individual authors.