Queensland Museum Research

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Queensland Museum is a multi-disciplinary museum research institution. Our collections and research promote inquiry and contribute to knowledge creation, helping to shape ideas and perspectives about how we can protect planet, people and places into the future.

Through the data held in our natural sciences collections and ongoing field work, our scientists seek to understand critical contemporary issues such as environmental change and biodiversity loss, sustainable practices, and the discovery, documentation and preservation of species in Queensland. Our cultural and historical collections are evidence of lived experience, including objects of cultural, social, historic and archaeological interest to Queensland.

We work in collaboration with Federal and State government agencies, leading universities, Traditional Owners and community partners to deliver high quality research projects, and we share research papers and resources with researchers around the world via our Research Portal.

Your donation can support our experts to continue their work to generate new insights, deepen knowledge and identify future solutions. Examples of our current research projects include:

Coral Bank

We are creating a curated genomic and taxonomic repository of Australia’s threatened coral reefs that will inform our understanding of, and conservation efforts for, the Great Barrier Reef.

Coral Bank will provide data collection with a critical snapshot of coral diversity in the Great Barrier Reef and across northern Australia at this point in time. Without this information there is a high risk of silent extinction where coral populations are lost without being noticed.

This research is led by Queensland Museum’s Dr Tom Bridge, Senior Curator of Corals and Dr Peter Cowman, Senior Curator of Biosystematics in collaboration with James Cook University, American Museum of Natural History – Smithsonian Institute, Charles Darwin University and Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory.

Diversity patterns in Brigalow Belt species

The semi-arid woodlands of the Brigalow Belt occurred across large areas of eastern Queensland, west of the Great Dividing Range. These woodlands have been fractured by over 150 years of human development, and now include some of Queensland’s most threatened ecological communities. This project includes targeted fieldwork across the Brigalow Belt (North) bioregion to document new species, understand the ecology and conservation status of endemic species, and test hypotheses about the impacts of past climate change.

This research is led by Queensland Museum’s Dr Paul Oliver, Senior Curator Terrestrial Vertebrates and Dr Michael Rix, Principal Scientist (Terrestrial Biodiversity) and Curator of Arachnology in collaboration with DES (Department of Environmental Science) threatened species team and Boobook Consulting, Roma.

You can also support Queensland Museum Research by joining the Guardians of Queensland Museum.