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Web of life · Mount Ninderry

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A rhyolite hill wearing an open gum forest, run from the canopy down: feed trees, nectar bars, sap wells and hollows overhead, a sunlit flowering floor below, and the whole middle kept open by fire.

The Mount Ninderry forest in cross-section A drawn cross-section of Mount Ninderry's open eucalypt forest, on ground that slopes gently down to a palm gully at the right. Tall gum crowns fill the upper part of the picture: a smooth-trunked grey gum with a koala in its fork, a fibrous-barked tallowwood, a black-trunked ironbark, and a rough-barked bloodwood with a dark clump of mistletoe slung under one limb; a slim ringed piccabeen palm stands up out of the gully. Below the crowns the mid-storey is drawn almost empty, a few scattered saplings in open air. The grassy floor carries a golden banksia spike, a grass-tree with a tall flower spike, a digging bandicoot beside its foraging pit, and a small charred patch left by the last fire. Beneath the surface a thin band of red-brown soil holds tree roots and pale fungal threads, with grey rhyolite rock close underneath. The anchor residents are named beside their drawings, and labelled chips mark where each working group operates. The complete record of who is here, and how they are joined, follows this picture as text. Hairpin banksia Grass-tree The last fire The diggers The forest floor Mycorrhizal fungi Soil & rock thin red-brown loam rhyolite, close beneath The open forest The open mid-storey Grey gum Koala Tallowwood Grey ironbark Pink bloodwood Mistletoe Piccabeen palm The canopy The air
The Mount Ninderry forest in cross-section A tall drawn cross-section of Mount Ninderry's open eucalypt forest, read top to bottom. Under a narrow band of air, gum crowns fill the upper half of the picture: a smooth grey gum with a koala in its fork, a fibrous-barked tallowwood, a black-trunked ironbark, and a rough-barked bloodwood with a dark mistletoe clump under one limb; a slim ringed piccabeen palm rises from the gully at the right edge. The mid-storey below the crowns is drawn almost empty, a few scattered saplings in open air. The grassy floor beneath carries a grass-tree, a golden banksia spike, a small charred patch from the last fire and a digging bandicoot beside its pit. At the bottom, a thin band of red-brown soil holds tree roots and pale fungal threads, with grey rhyolite rock close underneath. The anchor residents are named beside their drawings, and labelled chips mark where each working group operates. The complete record of who is here, and how they are joined, follows this picture as text. Grass-tree Hairpin banksia The last fire The diggers The forest floor Mycorrhizal fungi Soil & rock thin red-brown loam rhyolite, close beneath The open forest The open mid-storey Grey gum Koala Tallowwood Grey ironbark Pink bloodwood Mistletoe Piccabeen palm The canopy The air

58 living things and features. 100 connections between them. Touch one and the rest of the place comes with it.

Or touch anything in the drawing, or meet everyone who lives here.

Everyone who lives here

58 residents and features, in the working groups they belong to. Press any name to put it in the middle of the web.

the canopy · 3

The best browse the open forest offers and the animal it feeds: the grey gum and the tallowwood, and the koala that lives where the soil is just rich enough to grow them.

the canopy · 2

The two flowerings that keep the nectar economy open: the ironbark into the cooler months, when almost nothing else flowers, and the bloodwood in high summer.

the canopy · 9

The forest's daytime crowd: the laugh detonating from a dead branch, the shrieking lorikeets, the honeyeaters combing the canopy, the treecreeper spiralling up a trunk and the pardalote picking lerp off the leaves, the rosellas in the grass, the glossy black-cockatoo shearing she-oak cones, and the goanna and the skinks on their rounds below.

the air · 10

The after-dark economy: gliders working the blossom and the sap wells, the possums on the branches, an antechinus hunting the bark, microbats hawking insects between the trunks, and the powerful owl and the carpet python taking the lot. Nearly every one of them sleeps in a hole that took a century to make, and that is where this web's citations sit.

the canopy · 3

The fruit-pigeons that swallow the palm's bright red fruit whole and plant tomorrow's palms a gully away.

the forest floor · 5

The sunlit floor's standing crop, paid for by the light the open mid-storey lets through: kangaroo grass and wiregrass between the trunks, native peas threaded through the sward, the banksia spike and the grass-tree standing up out of it, and ferns where the slope tips into the gully.

soil and rock · 7

The underground economy: fungal threads trading minerals for sugar, wattles renting nitrogen-fixing bacteria, ants banking wattle seed, the diggers that sow the fungi as they feed, and the echidna that eats the ground's own workforce.

the canopy · 3

The artful non-payers: mistletoe tapping the canopy's plumbing, the small bird that plants it, and a leafless orchid living off the fungal network's traffic.

the forest floor · 3

The newcomers pressing on the forest: lantana thickening the mid-storey where fire and clearing opened the door, and the fox and cat hunting exactly the size of animal the diggers are.

the canopy · 6

Where most of this forest's eating happens. Sap-suckers under their sugary lerp caps, beetle grubs and caterpillars on the new growth, cicadas up from the roots, native bees at the blossom, and the spiders that make a living off the lot.

the forest floor · 5

Everything that falls here is taken apart by something. Termites and wood-rot fungi work the timber, and in doing so hollow out the trees the night shift sleeps in; the shredders, the litter fungi and the bacteria turn the leaf fall back into soil.

The forest and the fire the stage itself · 2

The forest and the fire are not the backdrop to this web, they are two of the things holding it up. The eucalypt forest is what nearly everything here lives inside, and how long ago the fire last came through is what its floor is telling you, so each is a place to stand like any resident.

Neighbouring stories just past the boundary · 1

These live at the edge of this web, not inside it. They appear because a connection or a signpost reaches them, and they are not drawn in the scene, because the scene holds only this place.

See the complete network all 100 relationships as one abstract graph, with each stroke saying where its evidence comes from
The Mount Ninderry web drawn as a connected graph. Every resident and feature is a dot, gathered into its working group, and every documented connection is a line between two dots: the more continuous the line, the stronger the evidence, and the arrow points at the taker. The open forest sits at the centre, because most of the cast holds a connection with it. Selecting a dot lights its own connections; every line opens the evidence behind it. The same information follows as text below. habitat and shelter · General ecology predation · General ecology predation · General ecology predation · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology grazing · General ecology predation · General ecology predation · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology predation · General ecology grazing · General ecology predation · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology seed dispersal · General ecology predation · General ecology predation · General ecology predation · General ecology a fungal partnership · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology grazing · General ecology habitat and shelter · Seen elsewhere habitat and shelter · General ecology grazing · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology pollination · General ecology pollination · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology parasitism or disease · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology grazing · General ecology grazing · General ecology predation · General ecology predation · General ecology decomposition · General ecology decomposition · General ecology decomposition · General ecology pollination · General ecology pollination · General ecology habitat and shelter · Seen elsewhere parasitism or disease · General ecology seed dispersal · General ecology host plant · General ecology predation · General ecology a fungal partnership · General ecology a fungal partnership · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology pollination · General ecology pollination · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology nutrient cycling · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology grazing · General ecology habitat and shelter · Seen elsewhere predation · General ecology predation · General ecology predation · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology grazing · General ecology predation · General ecology grazing · General ecology predation · General ecology predation · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology predation · General ecology predation · General ecology predation · General ecology decomposition · General ecology nutrient cycling · General ecology nutrient cycling · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology predation · General ecology predation · General ecology habitat and shelter · Seen elsewhere predation · General ecology habitat and shelter · Seen elsewhere pollination · General ecology predation · General ecology grazing · General ecology decomposition · General ecology decomposition · General ecology seed dispersal · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology predation · General ecology habitat and shelter · General ecology seed dispersal · General ecology seed dispersal · General ecology decomposition · General ecology parasitism or disease · General ecology parasitism or disease · General ecology habitat and shelter · Seen elsewhere predation · General ecology The grey gum. 5 relationships. Opens its entry. The koala. 3 relationships. Opens its entry. The tallowwood. 7 relationships. Opens its entry. The grey ironbark. 5 relationships. Opens its entry. The pink bloodwood. 4 relationships. Opens its entry. The kookaburra. 3 relationships. Opens its entry. The striated pardalote. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The white-throated treecreeper. 4 relationships. Opens its entry. The pale-headed rosellas. 4 relationships. Opens its entry. The skinks. 4 relationships. Opens its entry. The lace monitor. 3 relationships. Opens its entry. The glossy black-cockatoo. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The honeyeaters. 3 relationships. Opens its entry. The lorikeets. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The powerful owl. 7 relationships. Opens its entry. The carpet python. 4 relationships. Opens its entry. The brushtail possum. 5 relationships. Opens its entry. The ringtail possum. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The yellow-footed antechinus. 4 relationships. Opens its entry. The microbats. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The greater glider. 3 relationships. Opens its entry. The yellow-bellied glider. 3 relationships. Opens its entry. The sugar glider. 3 relationships. Opens its entry. The squirrel glider. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The piccabeen palm. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The topknot pigeon. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The wompoo fruit-dove. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The forest grass-tree. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The forest grasses. 3 relationships. Opens its entry. The gully ferns. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The hairpin banksia. 3 relationships. Opens its entry. The native peas. 3 relationships. Opens its entry. The wattles. 4 relationships. Opens its entry. The diggers. 3 relationships. Opens its entry. The ants. 3 relationships. Opens its entry. The echidna. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The cycad. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The mycorrhizal fungi. 5 relationships. Opens its entry. She-oak. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The hyacinth orchid. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The mistletoe. 3 relationships. Opens its entry. The mistletoebird. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The feral cat. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The lantana. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The red fox. 1 relationship. Opens its entry. The cicadas. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The leaf chewers. 4 relationships. Opens its entry. The moths and butterflies. 3 relationships. Opens its entry. The native bees. 3 relationships. Opens its entry. The sap-suckers. 3 relationships. Opens its entry. The spiders. 4 relationships. Opens its entry. The litter fungi. 2 relationships. Opens its entry. The litter invertebrates. 3 relationships. Opens its entry. The soil bacteria. 3 relationships. Opens its entry. The termites. 4 relationships. Opens its entry. The wood-rot fungi. 3 relationships. Opens its entry. Eucalypt forest and woodland. 35 relationships. Opens its entry. Fire — the force that draws the boundaries. no connections here yet. Opens its entry.
Swipe sideways to move across the network. Tap a group or resident to simplify it here. Every line is a connection, and its stroke tells you how well it is evidenced. The arrow points at the taker; arrows both ways mark a trade. Select a line to read its evidence, a dot to open its entry. Seen here Seen elsewhere General ecology Our reading a resident a feature of the place a neighbour

About this web

This web holds 100 relationships across 58 residents and features, and every one of them is on the page. It shows the plants, animals and fungi you can expect to find in this country and how they depend on one another. Some of that is drawn from the book's own chapters and some is the ordinary, well-understood ecology of this kind of place; the counts are computed from the shipped records, never typed in.

A honeyeater at a banksia flower and a fungus in the leaf litter belong here because that is how this country runs, whether or not anyone has published the observation on this exact ground. Where a relationship does rest on a particular study or a passage of the book, its card says so and its mark says where that knowledge came from: 6 recorded for these species elsewhere and 94 that are the general ecology of this kind of country. Those marks are about the record, not about the doubt: a koala browsing a grey gum is not a hypothesis, it is simply something nobody has published for this particular hill. Every relationship, printed once with its full evidence, quotation and source, is on the evidence register.

Whose country this is

The Kabi Kabi (Gubbi Gubbi) people are the Traditional Owners and continuing custodians of this country, and have read it for far longer than any source on this page. This release presents the published scientific record only. Knowledge of Country belongs to its custodians, and it would enter this product only through proper collaboration and cultural protocols, which has not yet happened. That is the scope of this page, stated plainly, not a gap we will quietly fill.

What the marks mean

  • Seen here · Recorded or measured on this mountain itself.
  • Seen elsewhere · Documented for these species, and not as a record made at this place. The source may well cover this coast; what it does not carry is the observation here. The tier word, not the verb, says where the work was done.
  • General ecology · Established for these species generally, and expected here for that reason. What is missing is the local record: nobody has published the observation made on this mountain yet.
  • Our reading · Our editorial interpretation, signed as such.

No resident here carries a location, by construction: the records this page is built from have nowhere to put one. A powerful owl's nest hollow is the kind of thing people go looking for, and this page could not point to one if it tried.