Mission exercises
Missions for Possums
Your Mission
Start a Mission, investigate its question and connect your answer with its sources. Look for what supports the answer and what still needs checking.
Progress and sources are saved on this device, without account sync or delivery to a review team. A saved response is an exercise record, not verified evidence or an ecological score.
Fictional training exercises are labeled examples. Target discovery exercises use existing approved dossier evidence. Neither represents live field work.
Hunt — the find mode within MissionsExplore Mission briefs and participation modesDiscover
Reconstruct the two events in this introduction record and explain why both are needed to understand how possums became established in New Zealand.
Read the approved evidence extract and reconstruct its complete statement in your answer. This exercise uses exact wording (ignoring case and spacing); paraphrases are not automatically judged. The discovery is personal and awards no field impact.
Ready to start
DOC — Possums — Description
The first introduction of possums to New Zealand in 1837 was unsuccessful. A second release in 1858 at the same Southland location was required for them to establish.
Read sourceDiscover
Assemble the combination of physical characteristics that belongs to a common brushtail possum.
Read the approved evidence extract and reconstruct its complete statement in your answer. This exercise uses exact wording (ignoring case and spacing); paraphrases are not automatically judged. The discovery is personal and awards no field impact.
Ready to start
DOC — Possums — Description
Possums have thick body fur in grey and black colour forms, a pointed snout, large pointed ears and a thick, bushy prehensile tail that helps them move around tree branches. Adults are typically 65 to 95 cm long and weigh 1.4 to 6.4 kg, although size varies across New Zealand.
Read sourceDiscover
Connect possum feeding and behaviour to the ecological consequences that follow.
Read the approved evidence extract and reconstruct its complete statement in your answer. This exercise uses exact wording (ignoring case and spacing); paraphrases are not automatically judged. The discovery is personal and awards no field impact.
Ready to start
DOC — Possums — The threat
Leaves are the main part of the possum diet, but possums are opportunistic omnivores. Eating leaves, buds, flowers, fruit, berries and nectar can disrupt plant growth and life cycles and creates competition with native birds and reptiles; favoured trees such as rata and kamahi can be hit especially hard. Possums also eat native birds and eggs, land snails and invertebrates such as weta, occupy tree holes otherwise available to nesting birds, and can spread bovine tuberculosis.
Read source