Natural History team

Find out about the people that make up our Natural History team and their roles at Te Papa.

Phil Edgar, MA

Head of Natural History

Phil leads the Natural History team of collection, curatorial, and research staff. Phil’s background at Te Papa is in opening up access to collections through museum collection information systems, data management, digitisation, online collections, and biodiversity informatics.

Alan Tennyson, MSc

Curator Vertebrates

Alan on a steep gravel bank, he has a pickaxe in his hand

Alan’s research covers most vertebrate animal groups but his particular expertise is in fossil and living birds. His current research focuses on the history and origins of New Zealand’s animals and the conservation of seabirds in the South Pacific.

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Andrew Stewart

Curator Fishes

A man in a room of shelves holding a jar with a fish in it

Andrew has had a fascination and love of fishes since he was very small. His particular areas of specialisation are the deep-water fishes and Southern Ocean (Antarctic) fishes, but he can cover the full range of species.

ORCID

Belinda Alvarez de Glasby, PhD

Kaitiaki Taonga Collection Manager, Invertebrates (Marine)

A woman is kneeling on the ground surrounded by buckets of marine specimens.

Belinda is a marine biologist specialising in sponges (Phylum Porifera) with additional expertise in other benthic invertebrates with bioactive properties including corals, lace corals, tunicates and ascidians. Belinda started her marine biology career in her country of origin, Venezuela, and later worked in collection-based institutions in the US, Australia, Sweden and New Zealand. Over the course of her career, Belinda has developed her skills and expertise in her speciality group (sponges) and in the management and curation of natural history collections. Her role at Te Papa is to care for the marine invertebrate collections and make them available for research, exhibitions and other public programs.

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Bridget Hatton, BSc

Kaitiaki Taonga Collection Manager Botany

A woman standing in front of a shelf full of labeled boxes.

Bridget cares for the 375,000 dried plant specimens in Te Papa’s herbarium. She is responsible for cataloguing new specimens, digitising historic data, preparing loans of material to other herbaria and hosting visiting researchers. She supports the research botanists and is closely involved with the push to digitise the botany collection by capturing high-resolution images of the specimens.

Carl Struthers, MSc

Research Officer, Vertebrates (Fishes)

Close up of a man on a beach looking at the camera

Carl has been Research and Technical Officer at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa since 2005. Carl is currently researching the taxonomy and phylogeny of the Seaperches, morid cod, and Flagfins in New Zealand and the South Pacific. His work also includes photography, digital imaging and radiography of fish specimens in support of ongoing research projects. As Te Papa’s Dive Officer, Carl is responsible for the underwater dive programme and its safe implementation. He is an experienced field worker, participating in many fish collecting expedition using scuba in coastal waters and blue-water expeditions to remote locations, both within and outside New Zealand waters (e.g., Kermadec, Auckland and Three Kings Islands). Carl was co-author of the award winning The Fishes of New Zealand.

ORCID | ResearchGate | Google Scholar

Carlos Lehnebach, PhD

Curator Botany

Carlos lies on the ground with his magnifying equipment on his head, surrounded by trees, with a big grin on his face

Carlos is a botanist who studies the diversity, evolution and conservation of New Zealand flowering plants. His main groups of interest are terrestrial and epiphytic orchids, alpine plants, and plants shared with other land masses in the Southern Hemisphere. His current projects aim at describing the New Zealand orchid flora and developing methods to assist the conservation of rare and threatened plants.

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Colin Miskelly, PhD

Curator Vertebrates

Colin is an ornithologist with broad interests, including conservation ecology, biogeography, and the history of science. An expert in bird identification, his research drove the creation of the website NZ Birds Online. Colin’s current research interests include Auckland Islands ornithology, Fiordland seabirds, vagrant birds, and New Zealand snipe relationships and conservation status.

ORCID | ResearchGate

Felix Marx, PhD

Curator Vertebrates

Man poses for a photo beside the skull of a whale

Felix is a palaeontologist and biologist with an interest in all things marine mammal: whales, dolphins, and seals. He specialises in the evolution of baleen whales, but has worked on a broad variety of topics, from macroevolution to feeding ecology, biogeography, and behaviour. Together with colleagues from Belgium and the USA, he published Cetacean Paleobiology, a comprehensive textbook on the evolution of whales and dolphins.

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Hazel Richards, PhD

Kaitiaki Taonga Collection Manager Vertebrates

A woman is holding a fossil and looking at the camera

Hazel is a palaeobiologist specialising in mammals, with broad interests in living and fossil animals of the land, sea and air. Her background is in comparative anatomy, and she has expertise in specimen preparation, 3D and CT imaging, exhibition development, and management and dissemination of museum collections data. At Te Papa she looks after the vertebrate collections, including living and extinct mammal, bird, reptile, and amphibian species from New Zealand and abroad.

ORCID | Google Scholar | ResearchGate

Heidi Meudt, PhD

Curator Botany

Heidi is a botanist whose collections-based research focuses on the evolution and classification of native New Zealand flowering plants, especially forget-me-nots (Myosotis). She uses morphology, pollen, DNA and other data to understand how many species there are, how they can be identified, and where they are found. Her research aims to update the taxonomy and conservation status of all native forget-me-nots. Heidi also studies native foxgloves (Ourisia), plantains (Plantago), and hebes (Veronica) throughout the southern hemisphere.

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Jeremy Barker, MAppSc

Kaitiaki Taonga Collection Manager, Vertebrates (Fishes)

A closeup of a bearded man standing in front of jars of fish

Jeremy is a marine biologist working in the Fish team. His work focuses on maintenance and development of the fish collection, as well as facilitating access and providing technical support. He helped produce The Fishes of New Zealand and is working on developing the Checklist of New Zealand Fishes.

ORCID

Julia Kasper, PhD

Lead Curator Invertebrates

Julia kneeling in the grass, she has a net by her side

Julia is an entomologist specialised in flies. She studies the taxonomy and distribution of lower Diptera in New Zealand with a strong focus on biosecurity. Her background is in medical and forensic entomology and odour-host recognition of flies using chemical ecological methods. Julia has a strong interest in outreach especially on topics such as medical entomology and freshwater macro-invertebrates.

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Julia Wilson-Davey, MSc

Natural History Collection Technician

Julia is a technician working primarily in the Botany collection. Her work includes collection management and processing new acquisitions. Julia’s background is in botany, ecology, and collection information management. She has an MSc in Environmental Science from Canterbury University.

Kerry Walton

Curator Invertebrates

A man is holding a snail shell in one hand and a the box it belongs in in the other hand. There is a drawer of similar boxes with snail shells beside him.

Kerry is a researcher specialising in molluscs, of which, Aotearoa has approximately 4,500 living species. His work includes genetics, taxonomy, biogeography and phylogeography as well as fieldwork and teaching. He is especially interested in the conservation of large, endangered land-snails, and studying unusual deep-sea habitats, such as hydrothermal vents. Kerry has experience collaborating or consulting on a range of palaeogenetics (ancient DNA), conservation, biosecurity and iwi-led projects.

ORCID | ResearchGate

Lara Shepherd, PhD

Researcher

Lara is an evolutionary biologist who uses genetic and genomic techniques to study the evolution of New Zealand’s flora and fauna. She also has an interest in applying these techniques to examine cultural objects.

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Leon Perrie, PhD

Curator Botany

Man in a Hawaiian shirt looking at plants and smiling

Leon’s research focuses on New Zealand’s ferns: their numbers, locations and identification. He has used DNA analyses to address this work and such questions as how ferns are related to one another and to species overseas. He was a contributing author for the Ferns and Lycophytes series for the online Flora of New Zealand. He also works on Pacific ferns, and has studied other plant groups, particularly Pseudopanax (lancewoods and five fingers).

ORCID | ResearchGate | Google Scholar | iNaturalist | NZ Ferns

Phil Sirvid, PhD

Curator Invertebrates

A close-up view of a man holding a small worm in his hands. He has a torch strapped to his forehead.

Phil has a broad general knowledge of New Zealand entomology but specialises in the arachnids, particularly spiders and harvestmen. He has published on the taxonomy, systematics and evolutionary history of New Zealand spiders as well as on medical entomology and arachnid conservation.

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Sarah Tassell, PhD

Manager, Natural History Collections

Head and shoulders photo of a woman looking at a camera

Sarah manages the Kaitiaki Taonga Collection Managers and Collection Technicians within the Natural History Team at Te Papa. She coordinates collection management activities related to collection care, access, and development. Sarah is a biologist with a background in terrestrial and aquatic ecology and science communication and has previously worked across several museums and research collections in Australia and New Zealand.

ORCID

Thom Linley, PhD

Curator of Fishes

Head and shoulders of a man in a high-vis vest and red hard hat smiling at something off camera

Thom specialises in deep-sea demersal (living close to the bottom) fishes from 4000 m depth and deeper. He is particularly interested in their ecology and distribution – how are they living down there and why are they found in some places and not others. He has an interest in developing the technology that allows deep-sea studies and ways it could be smarter and less costly.

Thom likes to explore different ways of communicating science to reach as many people as possible. He frequently gives public talks and created and co-hosts The Deep-Sea Podcast, which offers a fun and accurate portrayal of the deep sea.

ORCID | Google Scholar | The Deepsea Podcast

Postdoctoral Researchers and PhD Students

Shaun Thompson

PhD Student

Shaun is a Lincoln University PhD student and Invertebrate Collections Technician. His main research interests are in the taxonomy of flies and spiders. His PhD topic is focused on creating a taxonomic revision of the Acroceridae (hunchback flies) of New Zealand .”

ORCID

William M. G. Parker

Postdoctoral Researcher

A man in glasses and a white science coat is holding a large piece of an animal's skeleton.

William has joined the team at Te Papa Tongarewa as a researcher on a Marsden project led by Felix Marx (Deep-time evolution of marine mammal feeding ecology). His background is in morphological, histological and chemical analysis of mineralised tissues, working across a broad range of taxa. William is particularly interested in synchrotron science, analytical techniques and the development of new proxies that tell us more about the diets, environments and life histories of animals - now and in the past.

ORCID | Google Scholar

Research Associates

Clive Roberts, PhD

Research Associate, Vertebrates (Fishes)

Clive is an experienced field worker who has led numerous expeditions sampling New Zealand fish faunas, with teams of scientists using scuba in coastal waters and commercial and research vessels offshore in the deep sea. In 2003 he was science leader of the NORFANZ voyage on GRV Tangaroa. He has published a large number of scientific papers and popular science articles and is particularly interested in the taxonomy, diversity and biogeography of fishes of the Pacific Ocean. Clive was co-author of New Zealand Fish: A Complete Guide, The Rockpool Fishes of New Zealand, and The Fishes of New Zealand.

ResearchGate

Rick Webber, MSc

Research Associate, Invertebrates

Rick is a marine biologist specialising in Crustacea. His research is mostly on the identity of crabs, lobsters and shrimps, and especially the larvae of crabs. Currently he is researching the crabs and shrimps of Pacific islands, and the tiny larvae of pea crabs, the little crabs that live in mussels. He is also working with colleagues on a new species of land hoppers, the crustaceans that live on land, and on the identities of other small marine crustaceans.

Bruce Marshall, DSc

Research Associate Invertebrates (Malacology)

A head and shoulders photo of a man standing in front of trays of mollusc shells

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Ricardo Palma, MSc

Research Associate, Invertebrates

Ricardo’s research on parasitic lice includes morphology, taxonomy, systematics, phylogenetic relationships and host association. This work focuses mainly on New Zealand, Australia, and oceanic islands, with special emphasis on lice from sea birds. He also collaborates with foreign researchers on studies of lice from other regions, and with ornithologists on nomenclatorial matters relating to bird taxonomy.

ORCID | Google Scholar

Mike Fitzgerald, PhD

Research Associate, Invertebrates

Mike has a strong interest in the ecology and diversity of spiders in New Zealand and he also works on their taxonomy and systematics. He has surveyed spiders widely in New Zealand and contributed substantially to the spider collection in Te Papa. Mike is also interested in the historical development of arachnology in 19th-century New Zealand and of the role of A.T. Urquhart.

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