Professor Michael Bull

Field Sites

Mt Mary Field Site

The Bundey Bore field station within the Mount Mary area is our main reptile ecology study site. The area is semi arid chenopod shrub land about 130 km NE of Adelaide.

The work is centred around Bundey Bore homestead, a farm house, about 25 km NW of Mt Mary (33 55'S; 139 20'E). The house has been converted to a field station with living facilities for a group of field workers who spend most of the spring (Sept - December) working there. Each year we have volunteers from Australia and overseas helping with the work.

The homestead has sleeping and cooking facilities, a telephone, power and water, plus an area for sample sorting, and computing facilities. All field workers are equipped with two-way radios or mobile phones for contact with other researchers in the area.

The field work has concentrated on the ecology and behaviour of sleepy lizards and the parapatric boundary between two tick species that infest the lizards. We use road transect surveys as well as radio and GPS tracking for regular survey work. Usually there are around 3 or 4 projects being conducted each season, some projects involve experimental manipulations others monitor the lizard and tick populations. Data have been gathered from populations at this site since 1982 and comprise over 46,000 capture records at the end of 2006.


Burra Field Site

The Burra reptile ecology study site is a remnant area of semi arid native grassland located approximately 150 km NE of Adelaide.

The field station is a 4-bedroom farm house located 13 km east of Burra. The house has cooking, washing and computing facilities as well as areas for research activities. At least three projects are conducted each spring from this site.

The Burra site is home to the critically endangered pygmy bluetongue lizard, Tiliqua adelaidensis, which was thought to be extinct until its rediscovery in the area in 1992. The site has since been used continuously by a number of PhD and Honours students from Flinders University as well as ecologists from the Department of Environment and Heritage and the South Australian Museum for the study of this species. Previous work by Flinders University has described the basic biology and ecology of this species, habitat requirements and developed conservation strategies. Current studies are focussing on the population structure, lizard interactions and parasites. Future studies will look at grazing impacts and further management plans of the species.

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