Marianne Horak AO sparkles with enthusiasm as she moves between the rows of cabinets outside her office on the CSIRO campus in Canberra.
She almost dances with glee as she slides back the lids and explains why each moth in the tray is a wonder of nature.
The macadamia nutborer or the scribbly gum moth or the ghost moth are the life's work of Dr Horak who has been made an Officer of the Order of Australia.
At the age of 78, she has technically retired but is still very active in the study of moths (lepidopterology). Just to keep up with the physical demands of lifting cases, she goes to the gym once a week.
And there's a lot of heaving to be done. There are 12 million specimens in the CSIRO collection.
She will tell you with an evangelical enthusiasm about the caterpillar of a moth which lives in koala droppings (Koalas eats eucalypt leaves but because the leaves contain poisonous chemicals, they don't digest them fully. The moth in the dung has learned over time that the dropping is a convenient package of remnant nutrition, and has made its home there).
"We then realised that there is an entire group of moths which are all specialists in feeding inside the droppings of koalas and possums," she explains.
She will talk about how some ancient moths only live for one night, lay eggs and then die. Their caterpillars (larvae) live for years.
Her enthusiasm was first kindled by her parents during her childhood in a Swiss Alpine village. "I grew up in the mountains. I had parents who had books which identified insects, plants and fungi," she says.
Her interest took her to university in Zurich and then to New Zealand and New Guinea.
She came to realise that moths in the southern hemisphere, particularly in Australia, offered more interesting areas of research.
In the northern hemisphere, they have adapted and changed over the millennia as habitats have changed. In isolated Australia, today's moths resemble the moths of very ancient times. Early forms have survived.
"I realised that this is old stock - that was how the moth ancestors of modern groups looked."
Australia offered a blank page for research. European moths have been studied for a century or more.
Her work has economic implications. She tries to understand the moths which bore into and destroy fruit, for example.
She is a moth person but not really a butterfly person. Moths fly at night but butterflies are one small group of moths which returned to flying during the day. Butterflies are day creatures.
There are more than 22,000 species of moth in Australia and 450 species of butterflies.
She is particularly proud of how she and colleagues have got amateur enthusiasts more involved in publishing scientific studies.
She pays tribute to Len Willan who has collected moths all his life and who set up a website (Australian Moths Online) to document them. "He still spends every day replying to enquiries," Dr Horak says.
And she pays tribute to her CSIRO colleague Ted Edwards. "We did it together."
Of the AO award, Dr Horak says: "I'm deeply honoured and I am humbled. I really don't think I deserve this when I look at the other people who have been honoured."
We've made it a whole lot easier for you to have your say. Our new comment platform requires only one log-in to access articles and to join the discussion on The Canberra Times website. Find out how to register so you can enjoy civil, friendly and engaging discussions. See our moderation policy here.
