A Slow Death For The Study Of Life? MQ’s Biology & Environment Majors

Editor-In-Chief Kayleigh Greig dissects the flaws alongside the rigidity within Macquarie University’s Biology Major 

On 10 December 2025, Patty Hodgson sent an email on behalf of Simon Griffith to students enrolled in the Biology Major, detailing several “updates” to its units. Those previously on track to study ‘Life Processes’ will now need to enrol in ‘Animals’ or ‘Plants’. Likewise, they will change from ‘Invertebrate Biology and Behaviour’ to simply ‘Animal Behaviour’, from ‘Plant Biology’ to ‘Terrestrial Ecosystems’, and from ‘Vertebrate Biology and Behaviour’ to ‘Ecophysiology and Adaptation’. That means that students partway through their degree will never have the chance to study plant-, vertebrate- or invertebrate-centric units. 

I began my Biology Major in 2022. The table below compares the biology major then versus now. 

Biology Major 2022	Biology Major 2026
BIOL1110 - Genes to Organisms	BIOL1110 - Genes to Organisms
BIOL1310 - Organisms to Ecosystems	BIOL1310 - Organisms to Ecosystems
BIOL2110 - Genetics	BIOL2110 - Genetics
BIOL2210 - Life Processes	BIOL2350 - Animals
BIOL2410 - Ecology	BIOL2430 - Plants
BIOL3310 - Invertebrate Biology and Behaviour	BIOL3460 - Terrestrial Ecosystems
BIOL3410 - Plant Biology	BIOL3530 - Ecophysiology and Adaptation
BIOL3510 - Vertebrate Biology and Behaviour	BIOL3320 - Animal Behaviour

These changes mean that anyone studying a double degree with no flexible zone, such as myself, will graduate without ever having studied invertebrates or vertebrates specifically. I find this deeply concerning, as invertebrates take up over 95% of species on the planet, and for any graduate to call themself a “biologist” without having dedicated any focused studies on the bulk of life on earth is frankly laughable. Likewise, the vertebrate biology unit details the history of vertebrate evolution, core knowledge for anyone hoping to work in fields relating to mammals, reptiles or birds. To take both ‘Invertebrate Biology and Behaviour’ and ‘Vertebrate Biology and Behaviour’ and squish them into simply ‘Animals’ will leave students with a topic so broad that the basic information will be overwhelming. 

On the other hand, the decision to separate ‘Animals’ and ‘Animal Behaviour’ seems well-intentioned. When taking ‘Vertebrate Biology and Behaviour’, my convener complained of a prior merge that brought behaviour and biology together, making it impossible to aptly cover behavioural, morphological and physiological biology all in one. Still, by smushing vertebrates and invertebrates together, it feels like one step forward, two steps back.

Another potentially promising shift is the introduction of ‘Ecophysiology and Adaptation’, presumably replacing Life Processes, a unit that I found a bit meandering. Its experiments ranged from dropping fruit flies in plastic tubes and waiting for them to fly back to the top, to distinguishing between monocot and dicot plants. Some content was fascinating and important, while other activities had me questioning their relevance. So, under the title ‘Ecophysiology and Adaptation’, I hope that learning about physiological adaptations will be more structured.

A questionable change is the shift from ‘Ecology’ to presumably ‘Terrestrial Ecosystems.’ I undertook ‘Ecology’ in 2023 and loved it, especially the three-day field trip to Stanwell Tops, where we caught bugs, surveyed birds, and identified species in rock pools. I was distraught to hear that a friend who took the unit in 2025 wasn’t treated to the same experience—the field trip had been cut, apparently, so a new unit could be made specifically for that field trip. I still can’t understand why that would be necessary, as the field trip integrated into ‘Ecology’ perfectly. To switch to ‘Terrestrial Ecosystems’ only seems disappointing, taking away one of the few opportunities for biologists to brush up against coastal ecosystems without taking an entire marine biology degree. From its description, the unit still involves field work, but only a ‘weekend local’ field trip. Where? The unit guide hasn’t been released as of 3 January, so we don’t know.

In comparison to other unis, MQ’s is one of the least flexible biology majors. USYD and UNSW both have the opportunity to choose between multiple units, including some as specific as ‘Australian Wildlife Biology’, ‘Primate Anatomy’ and ‘Insect and Human Interactions’, allowing students to customise their degrees and pursue their personal interests. On the other hand, UTS and MQ students can only complete their major in one way: by ticking off an uncompromising set list of units. The result is a cohort of students with exactly the same specialties, robbing them of a competitive edge in niche fields. For a uni with a tagline like ‘You to the power of us,’ the decline in personalisation is ironic.

Unfortunately, Biology isn’t the only natural science at Macquarie to be affected by forced merges and loss of field trips. For my Minor, I chose Earth and Environmental Sciences, and I found the unit ‘Mass Extinctions’ particularly troubling. In all fairness, I loved the unit and learned a lot, but the cracks were clear from the start. A friend recommended it for the field trips to Narrabeen to check out the fossils in the shale, and the big field trip to Bingie. Of course, the unit guides are never uploaded until after you’ve enrolled, paid for the unit, registered for the classes, and just about started the semester, so I was going off the previous year’s unit guide until I found out that none of the field trips would be offered this year. The reason? One tutor confided that it was because so many tutors had been sacked that there weren’t enough people left to staff them. Instead, we were placated with a “virtual” field trip, which consisted of looking at photographs, 3D models and maps on a website—hardly the same thing. 

On top of all that, it was a very disjointed unit, clearly the result of a merge between two previous subjects. It had two workshop facilitators, one who took the first four weeks and spoke purely about geological cross sections and mineral id

entification, making me begin to question if the unit was about extinctions at all. Then, in the next four weeks, another professor took over completely, surprising us with lectures and quizzes after previously only having workshops, and asking us what the other teacher had already taught us, since they clearly hadn’t communicated. Finally, though, the second facilitator brought in the history of extinctions and a smidgeon of fossil work, but a strangely larger portion of the unit was dedicated to copying and pasting code into R—a useful skill, but not what I was hoping to focus on in an extinction unit. 

You may be wondering what we did for the last five weeks of term, and the answer is nothing, because the convener flew off to Italy, so he cut the unit short, resulting in our final project being due the morning of our final exam. Overall, yikes. I still learned a lot and don’t regret taking the unit, but it was clearly poorly managed and in dire need of separation into two units: ‘Intermediate Geology’ and ‘Fossil Geology’.

In all, nature is wonderful because of all its little niches. I hope that Macquarie’s courses will continue to pay respect to all creatures and processes, from erupting volcanoes to crawling insects, covering the broad topics, but never forgetting to zoom in on the details.