Tom Trnski

Position title:

Head of Natural Sciences

Section:: Natural Sciences

Email:

About Tom

I provide support and advocate for the Natural Sciences team of curators and collection managers. Our main activities are collection management, collection development, research, and exhibitions and public programmes relating to our collecting areas of botany, entomology, geology, land vertebrates, marine biology and palaeontology.

Research interests and projects

I’ve had a varied career in museums, mostly in research and collection management. Since moving to New Zealand in 2007 I have focused on the documentation and biogeographic affinities of the regional fish fauna.

I have led recent expeditions to document the biodiversity of remote islands in New Zealand (Three Kings and the Kermadec islands) and the regional Pacific region (southern French Polynesia, Cook Islands, Niue and Tonga). I contributed family chapters for the Fishes of New Zealand book published in 2015.

However, my expertise is in the larval development of fishes from the Pacific region. I build on this knowledge to peer into the black box of the early life history of fishes to answer questions relating to connectivity and dispersal in marine populations, population dynamics, marine reserve design, and identification of nursery areas for fishes.

Selected research publications

Trnski, T. (2016). Fishing the Line- Marine Protected Areas a win for ecology and economy. Pure Advantage. 9 March 2016.
Trnski, T. and Schlumpf, H. A (eds). (2015) Kermadec Biodiscovery Expedition 2011. Bulletin of the Auckland Museum 20: 1-518.

Trnski, T. and de Lange, P. (2015). Introduction to the Kermadec Biodiscovery Expedition 2011. Bulletin of the Auckland Museum 20: 1-18.

Trnski, T., Duffy, C., Francis, M., McGrouther, M., Stewart, A., Struthers, C. and Zintzen, V. (2015). Fishes from recent collections at the Kermadec Islands and new records for the region. Bulletin of the Auckland Museum 20: 463-480.

Parsons, D., Sim-Smith, C., Cryer, M., Francis, M., Hartill, B., Jones, E., Le Port, A., Lowe, M., McKenzie, J., Morrison, M., Paul, L., Radford, C., Ross, P., Spong, K., Trnski, T., Usmar, N., Walsh, C. and Zeldis, J. (2014.) Snapper (Chrysophrys auratus): a review of life history and key vulnerabilities in New Zealand. New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research 48: 256-283.

Neira, F., Miskiewicz, A. and Trnski, T. (1998). The Larvae of Temperate Australian Fishes: a laboratory guide for larval fish identification. Perth: University of Western Australia Press.

Leis, J. and Trnski, T. (1989). The Larvae of Indo-Pacific Shorefishes. Kensington: New South Wales University Press.

See Tom's full list of published research