Kate Bryant

Scientific publication is undergoing rapid change. The expansion of the internet has facilitated electronic publication, while the prevailing fashion for 18quantifying 19 the quality of academic papers, academic journals, authors and institutions is changing where authors publish, what they publish and also the content of what journals want to publish. In Australia these forces are exacerbated by the Commonwealth government 19s Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative, with journal assessment a key component of its focus on the quality of university research. Not all journals will survive the new conditions, nor will those kinds of research and researchers that do not meet the preferences of the surviving journals. This is an example of politically driven change with far-reaching environmental consequences - what Recher and Ehrlich (2005) called 18the Arbustocene 19. In particular, research on uniquely Australian natural history and ecology may suffer because, despite its value for local conservation issues, such regional research is seldom accepted by the major journals in North America and Europe or by the growing number of Australian journals aspiring to an international profile. We argue that the 18empty niche 19 in publishing Australian natural history can be filled by the journals of Australia 19s naturalists 19 clubs, especially if the papers are accessible on-line via a common link enabling searching across all the clubs 19 journals simultaneously. We propose the acronym of JANCO, for Journals of the Australian Naturalists 19 Clubs Online, for this particular database and encourage applications for funds to make the concept a reality.

The tiny (6-12 g) honey possum Tarsipes rostratus has many adaptations to harvest and digest the nectar and pollen that are its sole food items. It occurs only in southwestern Australia, primarily near nodes of high plant species richness in coastal sandplain heathlands. Honey possums are short-lived. Both sexes have an annual mortality rate of 86% and become sexually mature about 2-3 months after leaving the pouch while not yet fully grown. Most females carry pouch-young for almost all their subsequent life and males can sire young at all times of year. The small litter size (max. 4; mean 2.4) and slow growth of pouch-young is attributed to the nutritional constraints of their diet. Multiple paternity of litters indicates a polyandrous mating system. The honey possum is solitary and sedentary, males having larger home ranges (1 280 m2) than females (700 m2). It is both phylogenetically and ecologically distinct among mammals.