Canberrans well know the bogong moth (after all, we’re a pit-stop on their migration journey) but there are a few thousand other moth species that most of us couldn’t name – except Order of Australia honouree, Dr Marianne Horak AO.
She was supposed to retire from CSIRO in 2010 but felt she couldn’t because there are at least 22,000 new moth species to study – and only half of them have names.
Dr Horak, who proudly has three moth species named after her (including Myrtartona mariannae), happily handed over her administrative duties when she retired but her unpaid research continues.
“How could I leave?” she says. “[Entomologists] are so few people; the few professionals that there are have no hope of ever understanding all of them. It’s been very important for me and my colleague Ted Edwards to enable gifted amateur entomologists, people who can do science and work on this, with a little bit of encouragement and support. The only way I can accept the medal is for that.”
Dr Horak’s passion is palpable, she even left her homeland of Switzerland in 1980 because Australia’s diverse fauna is so “exciting”.
“In Australia, there are as many moths and butterflies species as there are flowering plants,” Dr Horak says. “The flowering plants are well known but moths are a very neglected group that is extremely important biologically.”
A case in point is a moth that clears leaf litter from eucalypts. Eucalypt leaves don’t rot because they consist of complex chemicals. However, caterpillars from one group of moths changed from feeding on live eucalypt leaves to feeding on dead leaves on the ground, breaking them down.
“Australian fauna is the key to understanding evolution,” Dr Horak says. “In the northern hemisphere through all the ice ages all the old groups have disappeared. In the Southern Hemisphere we still have some very old species, which tell us about evolution.”
Dr Horak says she couldn’t believe it when she was recognised on the King’s Birthday 2023 Honours List. “I feel very humbled,” she says.
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