Nonhuman

This note lists our nonhuman collaborators and beings that have led, contributed to, shaped, or benefited from our research. It also includes beings whose abundance or behaviour may negatively affect other lifeforms but who have nonetheless shaped designs and deserve equal consideration.

Organisms

Yalukit Weelam Tarrang [tree], likely River red gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis), this special tree is the first author on some of our publications and a key participant in multiple events.

Species

Plants

English elm (Ulmus procera), and others such as Dutch elm (hybrid group) (Ulmus × hollandica) planted in Melbourne.1
European ash (Fraxinus excelsior)
Mountain ash (Eucalyptus regnans), for example, in our work with the giant trees in Tasmania.2
Stinky lily (Typhonium brownii).1 In our data-driven exploration of this plant's behaviour during flowering in Melbourne.

Birds

Australian wood duck (Chenonetta jubata)
Boobook owl (Ninox boobook)
Brush-tailed phascogale (Phascogale tapoatafa)
Chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs)
Coal tit (Periparus ater)
Common myna (Acridotheres tristis)
Crimson rosella (Platycercus elegans)
Eastern rosella (Platycercus eximius)
Eurasian blue tit (Cyanistes caeruleus)
Galah (Eolophus roseicapillus)
Great spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major)
Great tit (Parus major)
Green woodpecker (Picus viridis)
Grey Heron (Ardea cinerea)
House sparrow (Passer domesticus)
Laughing kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae)
Lesser spotted woodpecker (Dryobates minor)
Little corella (Cacatua sanguinea)
Magpie-lark (Grallina cyanoleuca)
Marsh tit (Poecile palustris)
Powerful owl (Ninox strenua)
Rainbow lorikeet (Trichoglossus moluccanus)
Spotted dove (Spilopelia chinensis)
Striated pardalote (Pardalotus striatus)
Sulphur-crested cockatoo (Cacatua galerita)

Mammals

Common brushtail possum (Trichosurus vulpecula)
Common ringtail possum (Pseudocheirus peregrinus)
Leadbeater's possum (Gymnobelideus leadbeateri)
Ringtail possum (Pseudocheirus peregrinus)
Sugar glider (Petaurus breviceps) (now split into three species, true sugar glider is Petaurus notatus, Krefft's glider (Petaurus notatus), and savanna glider (Petaurus ariel))

Molluscs

Australian flat oyster (Ostrea angasi). Historically, these oysters built extensive reefs that lined much of Port Phillip Bay, stretching for about 300 km. None of that reef survives. We work with them as co-designers in reef restoration: their settlement, growth, and survival provide feedback that drives iterative redesign of reef structures.

Fishes

Anguillid eels are the key collaborators in our major European Research Council Synergy project, PLANETARY EEL.3 The project aims to rethink the planet with eels as guides and runs from 2026 to 2033. The project will focus on many of the 19 anguillid eels,4 including:

Australian shortfin eel (Anguilla australis australis Richardson, 1841). Found throughout eastern Australia, including the Murray-Darling Basin. Lives in Melbourne, including at the grounds of Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria.
Australian longfin eel (Anguilla reinhardtii Steindachner, 1867). Distributed widely along the eastern coast of Australia from Cape York, Queensland, to Melbourne, Victoria, including Tasmania and Lord Howe Island.
Bicolor eel (Anguilla bicolor McClelland, 1844). Occurs in northern parts of Australia, especially in tropical regions. Also widespread in the Indo-Pacific region, reflecting its tropical distribution.
New Zealand longfin eel (Anguilla dieffenbachii Gray, 1842). Occasionally reported in southeastern Australian systems, although primarily native to New Zealand.
European eel (Anguilla anguilla Linnaeus, 1758). Listed as critically endangered by IUCN and in CITES appendix II. Native to Atlantic Ocean, the Palearctic, and Mediterranean Sea.
Japanese eel (Anguilla japonica Temminck & Schlegel, 1846). Native to Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Vietnam, northern Philippines.
American eel (Anguilla rostrata Lesueur, 1817). Native to North America, including the eastern United States and Canada, as well as parts of Central America and northern South America.
Indo-Pacific eel (Anguilla marmorata Quoy & Gaimard, 1824). Found in tropical and subtropical regions of the Indo-Pacific, including parts of Australia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands.

Insects

Blue-banded bee (Amegilla cingulata) participated in analysing opportunities for persistence in cities and in designing reconfigurable habitat structures that can attach to many existing structures.
Arboreal nest-building termites (Nasutitermes walkeri) that leave in eastern New South Wales and south-eastern Queensland, Australia have developed structurally strong, lightweight, thermally and hydrologically attractive structures that have been used by birds for nesting and informed some of our algorithmically generated and automatically fabricated designs.9

Fungi

Oyster mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus)

Higher-level groups

Ecosystems, Biomes, and All-Life Creative Communities

Australian Grassy Woodlands

In the grassy woodlands of south-eastern Australia, eucalypts, typically box and red gum, dominate the tree layer but remain widely spaced. Shrubs occur at low density, while tussock grasses and forbs form a diverse ground layer. Tree hollows and seed-bearing plants support diverse bird assemblages, including parrots, cockatoos, finches, and robins. Eucalypt mass-flowering draws nomadic birds, while nectar- and pollen-feeding mammals exploit these pulses. Land clearing and agricultural intensification have reduced mature trees and the habitat they provide, including hollows. This loss of old trees constrains species that depend on cavities and other long-developing structures, which remain central to the functioning of these systems. Our work in Canberra is one such example.5

Urban Forests

Urban forests and urban ecosystems in southern Australia, especially Melbourne

Near-Surface Ecologies in Novel Ecosystems

Planted Tree Stands

Planted mountain forests in Trentino, Italy6

Wooded Parkland

Humans have managed the land now known as Blenheim Estate for well over a millennium. Anglo-Saxon human communities used it as a chase, and Henry I enclosed it as a royal deer park in the twelfth century. Birds and other wildlife have negotiated these human-imposed conditions for centuries.

When the estate passed to the Duke of Marlborough in 1704, designers recast the grounds as a monument to military victory. In 1764, Capability Brown transformed the landscape for the 4th Duke. He dammed the River Glyme to create the great lake, then planted trees in compositions guided by aristocratic aesthetics rather than ecological function.

High Park's ancient oaks survived these redesigns because managers could not easily replace trees of that age and ecological value. Cavity-nesting birds, rare beetles, and bats persisted by adapting to each new human regime. In the late twentieth century, estate priorities moved toward conservation.

Blenheim Park received Site of Special Scientific Interest designation in 1986 for its ancient oak woodland and lakes, which support regionally important breeding and wintering birds. The Lake and Queen Pool, a second SSSI, supports water voles and Grey Herons (Ardea cinerea). The estate has since planted over 250,000 trees, established 27 log hives for bees, and installed nest boxes from which 45 barn owls have fledged. Red-listed Marsh Tits (Poecile palustris) and rare bats roosting in the Grand Bridge persist here because of this sustained effort.

Our work at Walnut Clump, a roundel that eighteenth-century managers likely established as a tree nursery, extends this history but changes its premise. We move from conservation management toward co-design and co-innovation with nonhuman participants.

The central problem for many local birds is a shortage of nesting hollows. Tree cavities form slowly over decades of fungal decay and woodpecker excavation, so scarcity limits cavity-nesting species across the estate. Artificial structures such as nest boxes can help, but many are brittle, overheat, or otherwise fail to provide suitable housing.

A one-time provision of a fixed number of boxes cannot meet a continuous and variable demand for housing under novel conditions. The processes that once generated hollows at sufficient density no longer keep pace in a managed landscape, so we need innovation. Those same processes still provide a model. Great spotted woodpeckers (Dendrocopos major), green woodpeckers (Picus viridis), and lesser spotted woodpeckers (Dryobates minor) chisel cavities whose form reflects the birds' bodies and the wood's resistance. Bracket fungi decompose heartwood and create conditions that woodpeckers then exploit. European ash (Fraxinus excelsior) contributes branch angles, bark texture, and microsite exposure that determine whether a cavity becomes viable housing. These nonhuman actors co-engineer and co-build habitat structures.

Our approach starts from these contributions.7 8 We cultivate oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus) to grow mycelium-bound biomaterials and use them to fabricate prosthetic nest structures. This process introduces nonhuman agency at the material level: fungi contribute the substance of the nest, and birds set the criteria by which we judge adequacy. Each generation of inhabitants responds to each generation of structures, and those responses drive redesign.

Coal tits (Periparus ater), Eurasian blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus), Great tits (Parus major), Marsh tits (Poecile palustris), and House sparrows (Passer domesticus) are clients and assessors. Their populations are declining, and suitable housing remains in short supply. We install prosthetic nests alongside conventional nest boxes and record which structures each species enters, modifies, and occupies. Their settlement choices, together with measures of health and reproductive success, set the brief for the next design iteration.

Future work will scale this approach through installations in the United Kingdom and Poland. We will track how urban-rural gradients, microclimate, and microbiome shape occupancy, health, and fitness. Community workshops with schools and local groups will extend collaboration and uptake beyond the research team.

Sites and Places

Burnley
- Intelligent Lighting Networks
Barrer Hill
- The Last of their Kind

Footnotes

The Last of their Kind project˄
The Last of their Kind ˄
Rethinking the planet with eels as guides, an ERC Synergy project 2026-2033.˄
With common names following Tsukamoto, Katsumi, Mari Kuroki, and Shun Watanabe. "Common Names for All Species and Subspecies of the Genus Anguilla." Environmental Biology of Fishes 103, no. 8 (2020): 985-91. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-020-00988-3.˄
Parker, Dan, Stanislav Roudavski, Therésa M. Jones, Nick Bradsworth, Bronwyn Isaac, Martin T. Lockett, and Kylie Soanes. “A Framework for Computer-Aided Design and Manufacturing of Habitat Structures for Cavity-Dependent Animals.” Methods in Ecology and Evolution 13, no. 4 (2022): 826–41. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210x.13806.˄
Holland, Alexander, Philip Gibbons, Jason Thompson, and Stanislav Roudavski. "Modelling and Design of Habitat Features: Will Manufactured Poles Replace Living Trees as Perch Sites for Birds?" Sustainability 15, no. 9 (2023): 7588. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15097588. Holland, Alexander, Philip Gibbons, Jason Thompson, and Stanislav Roudavski. "Terrestrial Lidar Reveals New Information about Habitats Provided by Large Old Trees." Biological Conservation 292 (2024): 110507. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2024.110507.˄
Parker, Dan, Stanislav Roudavski, Chiara Bettega, Luigi Marchesi, Paolo Pedrini, Mattia Brambilla, and Kylie Soanes. "Which Design Is Better? A Lifecycle Approach to the Sustainable Management of Artificial Habitat-Structures." Conservation Science and Practice 7, no. 8 (2025): e70084. https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.70084.˄
BOTB grant helps answer the question - can fungi build better homes for cavity-nesting birds? | Birds on the Brink ˄
Is the bird nest of the future 3D-printed and made of mushrooms? | National Geographic ˄