"Spineless Wonders is a unique Western Australian based business, whose aim is to increase the publics awareness of our largest group of animals - the invertebrates. ".                 THE COLLECTION (Introduction)             The sample photographic collection contained in this website covers 28 years of wildlife-oriented exploration centred in the Australasian region. David Knowles is the author of the bulk of photos with occasional contributions by his wife Fleur. We hold copyright on all images displayed here unless otherwise acknowledged. Definitions – Composite Images The use of composite images in this sample stock photo library is influenced by the limitations of an aging technology – In order to take a close-up (macro) photograph of a small subject and have it in focus one had to use a flash. The catch was that flash, at the macro level, automatically darkens the scenery behind the subject making the background very dark. This is not such a problem for nocturnal animals. However if your subject is diurnal then the background information is lost, or severely muted. At the scale of the human eye it is perfectly acceptible and possible to take a photo of a friend and have, say Uluru (Ayers Rock), clearly in the background. The background information immediately adds context or information about locality. Then why should we not add this contextual information to any small daytime active animal or flowering plant occurring around this iconic Australian landform? Adobe PHOTOSHOP is a contemporary, publically available, technology that allows us to see the natural backgrounds for small subjects for the first time by allowing the insertion of a (in my applications) habitat photo behind the subject. In some cases this means that I have combined my foreground subject with a friend or colleague’s legitimate habitat background, indeed in the case of animals that have different looking sexes, I have combined a third party image to show both sexes and the habitat in the one information rich, and economically sensible, image. Of course the image must be large enough to satisfactorily view the component information. Hence such an image COPYRIGHT designation might read like this – Primary Image © David Knowles, Secondary Image © Joe Bloggs, Tertiary Image © Jean Bloggs. Any composite image shown in this web sample is designated by the abbreviation Composite image. Disclaimer – Common Names This is a wildlife oriented website specialising in small land creatures lacking spines, although there are ‘spined wonders’ present here as well. In the case of Spineless Wonders only a tiny amount of them have common English names. We have found that most people we meet in our work tend to recoil at the sound of scientific lingo – hence for the sake of ease of species recognition we have employed our own ‘working’ common name. In no way are they intended to be formal designations. Australian State acronyms Throughout this site we have used Australian State acronyms such as; WA = Western Australia, SA = South Australia, NT = Northern Territory, NSW = New South Wales, Qld = Queensland, Vic = Victoria.