Guinea Birds Research Articles

Distributional Ecology of New Guinea Birds

The concepts by which MacArthur and Wilson have transformed the science of ecology in the past decade, and the results of ecological studies such as mine on New Guinea bird communities, have implications for conservation policies. For example, primary tropical rain forest, the most species-rich and ecologically complex habitat on earth, has for millions of years served as the ultimate evolutionary source of the world's dominant plant and animal groups. Throughout the tropics today, the rain forests are being destroyed at a rate such that little will be left in a few decades. When the rain forests have been reduced to isolated tracts separated by open country, the distribution of obligate rain forest species will come to resemble bird distributions on New Guinea land-bridge islands after severing of the land bridges. The smaller the tract, the more rapidly will forest species tend to disappear and be replaced by the widespread second-growth species that least need protection (13). This ominous process is illustrated by Barro Colorado Island, a former hill in Panama that became an island when construction of the Panama Canal flooded surrounding valleys to create Gatun Lake. In the succeeding 60 years several forest bird species have already disappeared from Barro Colorado and been unable to recolonize across the short intervening water gap from the forest on the nearby shore of Gatun Lake. The consequences of the species-area relation (Fig. 1) should be taken into consideration during the planning of tropical rain forest parks (13). In a geographical area that is relatively homogeneous with regard to the fauna, one large park would be preferable to an equivalent area in the form of several smaller parks. Continuous nonforest strips through the park (for example, wide highway swaths) would convert one rain forest "island" into two half-size islands and should be avoided. If other considerations require that an area be divided into several small parks, connecting them by forest corridors might significantly improve their conservation function at little further cost in land withdrawn from development. Modern ecological studies may also be relevant to the understanding of human populations. For instance, during a long period of human evolution there appear to have been not one but two coexistent hominid lines in Africa, the Australopithecus robustus-A. boisei ("Zinjanthropus") line, which became extinct, and the Australopithecus africanus-A. habilis line, which led to Homo sapiens (27). The need to maintain niche differences between these lines must have provided one of the most important selective pressures on the ancestors of modern man in the late Pliocene and early Pleistocene. Thus, any attempt to understand human evolution must confront the problem of what these ecological segregating mechanisms were. To what extent were contemporaneous species of the two lines separated by habitat, by diet, by size difference, or by foraging technique, and were their local spatial distributions broadly overlapping or else sharpened by behavioral interactions as in the case of the Crateroscelis warblers of Fig. 6? To take another example, there are striking parallels between the present distributions of human populations and of bird populations on the islands of Vitiaz and Dampier straits between New Guinea and New Britain. Some of these islands were sterilized by cataclysmic volcanic explosions within the last several centuries. The birds that recolonized these islands have been characterized as coastal and small-island specialists of high reproductive potential, high dispersal powers, and low competitive ability, unlike the geographically closer, competitively superior, slowly dispersing, and breeding birds of mainland New Guinea (10, 11, 13). It remains to be seen whether the people of the Vitiaz-Dampier islands, the Polynesians, and other human populations that colonize insular or unstable habitats also have distinctive population ecologies.

Further Notes on Eggs of New Guinea Birds

Further Notes on Eggs of New Guinea Birds

Nests and Eggs of Some New Guinea Birds

A collection of nests and eggs of twenty-six New Guinea species is described. Apart from those of the megapodes and pigeon, these were identified from skins of birds taken at the nests. The nests and eggs of ten of these species, indicated with an asterisk on the list below, do not seem to have been described before. The data on other species supplement, but do not always agree with, earlier descriptions. *Accipiter poliocephalus, Megapodius freycinet, Talegalla jobiensis, Aepypodius arfakianus, *Reinwardtoena reinwardisi, *Ninox theomacha, Podargus ocellatus, *Halcyon megarhynchus, Saxicola caprata, *Crateroscelis nigrorufa, Eupetes leucostictus, *Rhipidura atra, *Monarcha axillaris, Machaerirhynchus nigripectus, Tregellasia leucops, *Heteromyias albispecularis, *Pachycephala soror, Pachtycephala rufinucha, Myiolestes megarhynchus, Phonygammus keraudrenii, Parotia lawesi, Lophorina superba, Amblyornis subalaris, Chlamydera cerviniventris, Melanocharis striativentris, *Zosterops novaeguineae.

Handbook of New Guinea Birds, by Austin L. Rand and E. Thomas Gilliard. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £6 6s.

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Dual Singing by New Guinea Birds

A relatively uncommon but intriguing form of bird song, the significance of which is imperfectly understood, is synchronized duetting between a mated male and female. Most reports of birds engaging in this come from the tropics, with examples from Central America (Skutch, 1940), South America (Haverschmidt, 1947), Africa (Moreau, 1941; Thorpe, 1963; Grimes, 1966), Madagascar (van Someren, 1947), and Malaya (Young, 1942). A few examples from the temperate zone have also come to light among owls, Himalayan (Osmaston, 1941) and Australian (Robinson, 1947: 14-17) passerines, and the Canada Goose (Branta canadensis) (Collias and Jahn, 1959), Carolina Wren (Thryothorus ludovicianus), and three species of quail (Stokes and Williams, 1968) of North America. A selected list of species may be found in Van Tyne and Berger (1959: 140). The present paper is an analysis of all instances known to us of duetting by New Guinea birds, based largely on our previously unpublished field observations. As it has been suggested that the incidence of duetting may correlate with type of habitat, possibilities for visual contact between singers, or sexual dimorphism of plumage, these points are considered in each species discussed. Duets may be divided conveniently into three categories. (1) The leader (generally the male) sings one phrase, and at its conclusion the second bird (generally the female) sings another phrase. Often the follower begins so precisely upon cessation of the leader's phrase that the result may easily pass for a conventional single song, unless the observer can see the singers or is close enough to hear that different notes come from different places. For example, the Marbled Wood-Quail (Odontophorus gujanensis) calls a rapidly repeated corcorovado, in which corcoro is always sung by one member of a pair and vado by the other (Chapman, 1929: 275; Armstrong, 1963). The term antiphonal singing has been used for this type of duetting, in which male and female sing alternately rather than simultaneously. In this category belong the Central American wrens described by Skutch (1940) and Amaurornis olivaceus, Pitohui kirhocephalus, and Philemon novaeguineae (see below) of New Guinea. (2) Members of a pair sing different phrases simultaneously. The synchronization between the two phrases may nevertheless be very exact; the female may begin only a fraction of a second after the male. In New Guinea the duets of Megapodius freycinet, Campochaera sloetii, and Coracina montana are of this type. (3) The male and female sing virtually identical phrases in unison. Such unison duets are practiced by Centropus toulou (Cuculidae) of Madagascar (van Someren, 1947), Aspatha gularis (Momotidae) of Central

Field Notes on some New Guinea Birds

Field Notes on some New Guinea Birds

Mayr's 'List of New Guinea Birds' List of New Guinea Birds. A Systematic and Faunal List of Birds of New Guinea and Adjacent Islands Ernst Mayr

Mayr's 'List of New Guinea Birds' List of New Guinea Birds. A Systematic and Faunal List of Birds of New Guinea and Adjacent Islands Ernst Mayr

Greenway on New Guinea Birds Birds from the Coastal Range between the Markham and Waria Rivers, Northeastern New Guinea James C. Greenway, Jr.

Greenway on New Guinea Birds Birds from the Coastal Range between the Markham and Waria Rivers, Northeastern New Guinea James C. Greenway, Jr.

Bangs and Peters on New Guinea Birds A Collection of Birds from Southwestern New Guinea (Merauke Coast and Inland) Outram Bangs James L. Peters

Bangs and Peters on New Guinea Birds A Collection of Birds from Southwestern New Guinea (Merauke Coast and Inland) Outram Bangs James L. Peters