Canterbury New Zealand

Baited pitfall traps were used to sample Oligosoma maccanni and Oligosoma nigriplantare polychroma at Birdlings Flat, on Kaitorete Spit, Canterbury, New Zealand. The two species of skink showed distinctive patterns of habitat use with O. maccanni being almost entirely confined to dunelands while O. n. polchroma was invariably captured in the shrub-covered terraces behind the dunes. This is in direct contrast to what has been documented for these species in central Otago.

Seedlings of fifteen species of shrubs and small trees, commonly found in open sites and early stages of secondary succession, were grown in a glasshouse under light intensities of 16% and 66% full daylight, and their growth parameters (height, number of leaves, dry weight, mean relative growth rate) recorded. Three species from open habitats, Coprosma robusta and Dodonaea viscosa, and an adventive shrub, Crataegus monogyna, had the highest mean relative growth rates in 66% daylight and 16% daylight, but their ranking for other parameters (e.g. height) was variable.