New Britain Research Articles

Else Hoff’s (fl. 1907–1925) collection of birds from the island of New Britain, Melanesia, with notes on the possibly extinct rail Gymnocrex plumbeiventris intactus (Aves: Rallidae)

Else Hoff’s (fl. 1907–1925) collection of birds from the island of New Britain, Melanesia, with notes on the possibly extinct rail Gymnocrex plumbeiventris intactus (Aves: Rallidae)

SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL ANALYSIS OF LAND SURFACE TEMPERATURE CHANGE ON NEW BRITAIN ISLAND

Land Surface Temperature (LST) is a parameter to estimate the temperature of the Earth’s surface and to detect climate change. Papua New Guinea is a tropical country with rainforests, the greatest proportion of which are located on the island of New Britain. Hectares of rainforests have been logged and deforested because of infrastructure construction. This study aims to investigate the change in land surface temperatures on the island from 2000 to 2019. The temperature data were taken from National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Terra satellites and were analysed using two statistical models: spatial and temporal. The spatial model used multivariate regression, while the temporal one used autoregression (AR). In this study, a cubic spline fitted curve was employed because this has the advantage of being smoother and providing good visuals. The results show that almost all the sub-regions of New Britain have experienced a significant increase in land surface temperature, with a Z value of 7.97 and a confidence interval (CI) of 0.264 – 0.437. The study only investigated land surface temperature change on New Britain Island using spatial and temporal analysis, so further analysis is needed which takes into account other variables such as vegetation and land cover, or which establishes correlations with other variables such as human health.

‘Do you want us to feed you like a baby?’ Ascriptions of dependence in East New Britain

‘Do you want us to feed you like a baby?’ Ascriptions of dependence in East New Britain

Using soundscapes to detect variable degrees of human influence on tropical forests in Papua New Guinea.

There is global concern about tropical forest degradation, in part, because of the associated loss of biodiversity. Communities and indigenous people play a fundamental role in tropical forest management and are often efficient at preventing forest degradation. However, monitoring changes in biodiversity due to degradation, especially at a scale appropriate to local tropical forest management, is plagued by difficulties, including the need for expert training, inconsistencies across observers, and lack of baseline or reference data. We used a new biodiversity remote-sensing technology, the recording of soundscapes, to test whether the acoustic saturation of a tropical forest in Papua New Guinea decreases as land-use intensity by the communities that manage the forest increases. We sampled soundscapes continuously for 24 hours at 34 sites in different land-use zones of 3 communities. Land-use zones where forest cover was fully retained had significantly higher soundscape saturation during peak acoustic activity times (i.e., dawn and dusk chorus) compared with land-use types with fragmented forest cover. We conclude that, in Papua New Guinea, the relatively simple measure of soundscape saturation may provide a cheap, objective, reproducible, and effective tool for monitoring tropical forest deviation from an intact state, particularly if it is used to detect the presence of intact dawn and dusk choruses.

Vocal comparison between Tabar Pitta Erythropitta splendida and New Britain Pitta E. gazellae

Vocal comparison between Tabar Pitta <i>Erythropitta splendida</i> and New Britain Pitta <i>E. gazellae</i>

Four new species of Trigonopterus Fauvel from the island of New Britain (Coleoptera, Curculionidae).

The hyperdiverse genus Trigonopterus has its center of diversity in Melanesia, but only a single species is recorded from the Bismarck Archipelago to date. Here we describe four new species from the island of New Britain: Trigonopterus chewbacca sp. n., Trigonopterus obsidianus sp. n., Trigonopterus puncticollis sp. n. and Trigonopterus silaliensis sp. n. We provide cytochrome oxidase subunit I (cox1) sequences of the new species and a key to all five species known from the Bismarck Archipelago.

Variation in tropical forest structure and diversity, New Britain Island, Papua New Guinea

Variation in tropical forest structure and diversity, New Britain Island, Papua New Guinea

Distribution of an allele associated with blond hair color across northern island melanesia

Pigmentation of the skin, hair, and eyes is a complex trait controlled by multiple genetic loci. Recently a non-synonymous mutation in the pigmentation candidate gene TYRP1 was shown to be significantly associated with a blond-hair phenotype in populations from the Solomon Islands. The distribution of this mutation in the islands of Northern Island Melanesia, where the blondism phenotype is also prevalent, was unknown. Here, we present data describing the distribution of this allele in 550 individuals sampled from across this region, and test for associations between genotype at this locus and quantitatively measured skin and hair pigmentation phenotype. We report that the frequency of the 93C allele is notably lower than observed in the Solomons (0.12 vs. 0.26). The allele exhibits significant geographic heterogeneity across the islands sampled (χ(2) = 108.4, P < 0.0001). It is observed at its highest frequencies on the islands of New Ireland and New Hanover, while being almost completely absent from the large island of New Britain. Using linear regression with age, sex, and island as covariates we report that, as in the Solomons, the 93C allele is significantly associated with a decrease in hair pigmentation but not skin pigmentation. We discuss the distribution of the 93C allele across the Southwest Pacific in light of its possible place of origin and dispersal.

Tectonic and magmatic evolution of the Bismarck Sea, Papua New Guinea; review and new synthesis

The Bismarck Sea, located north of Papua New Guinea and just south of the equator, formed during the final stages of a long, complex geological development of the Melanesian Borderland, which resulted from Cenozoic convergence between the Australian and Pacific-Caroline Plates and the opening of back-arc basins. The sea, which straddles two oppositely facing trenches, the inactive Manus trench and the active New Britain trench, covers two basins, the New Guinea Basin to the west and the Manus Basin to the east. These basins are separated by the shallow Willaumez-Manus Rise, trending roughly from WNW to ESE. The origin of these major structural units and their relationship with the present-day zone of major seismicity along the Bismarck Sea Seismic Lineation remains unclear. A detailed examination of geophysical and geochemical data, combined with geologic and geodetic information from surrounding regions, attests that the Bismarck Sea went through some rather unusual events of back-arc development beginning in the middle Pliocene. Around 3.5 Ma, the northern tip of New Guinea came into contact with the Finisterre-Huon Range. The event triggered a back-arc opening that eventually divided the Bismarck seafloor into North and South Bismarck Plates. The rapid opening also caused an upwelling of anomalously hot upper mantle beneath the Bismarck Sea. A large volcanic outflow during this period may have contributed to the formation of the rise west of Manus Island. Both the North and South Bismarck Plates interacted with surrounding plates, and small and large changes may have occurred throughout their history. A sudden shift in local plate motion, perhaps caused by locking such as plate collision, may have caused the overlying lithosphere to decouple from the mantle upwelling. The Willaumez-Manus Rise was probably created under such circumstances when a large volume of rising magma leaked out along a strike-slip plate boundary linking the spreading centers in the New Guinea and Manus basins. An alternative view is that the Willaumez-Manus Rise represents a magmatically robust segment of a single spreading axis that linked the two basins. The further docking of Finisterre-Huon Range with the New Guinea Highlands allowed the South Bismarck Plate to open faster toward the east in the Manus Basin and eventually to jump to the present-day Bismarck Sea Seismic Lineation. The Willaumez Transform was initiated by this more recent plate-boundary reorganization. Seafloor spreading commenced in the Manus Spreading Center <0.78 Ma, and the overall pattern suggests that rifting in the Bismarck Sea is propagating eastwards in the Southeastern Rift and westwards in the Western Spreading Ridges. One feature that distinguishes the Bismarck Sea from most other recently opened back-arc spreading systems in the western Pacific, except for the northern North Fiji and Lau basins, is the anomalously large distance (more than 400 km) between the arc and the spreading axis. This reflects the complex, combined geodynamic processes in this region, i.e., arc-continent collision, mantle upwelling, and rapid back-arc opening specific to this region. Central Bismarck Sea lavas are also unusual as they contain chemical components characteristic of the lower mantle. This may reflect proximity to the Melanesian Borderland, long a site of major subduction, and therefore of upper mantle enrichment by subduction-derived components, compared to other spreading systems.

Die ganzheitliche Evangelisierungsmethode der katholischen Mission und ihr Beitrag zur Landesentwicklung in Papua Neuguinea

Since the arrival of Sacred Heart missionaries (MSC) on Matupit island, an offshore island of New Britain in the Bismarck archipelago of New Guinea on September 29,1882, the Divine Word Missionaries (SVD) at Madang on the Northern coast of mainland New Guinea on August 13, 1896 and the Marist missionaries (SM) on March 27, 1899 on the Shortland Islands, Northern Solomon, the people of New Guinea experienced an encounter with a new kind of agent of change. Different from the colonial government and merchants, they had a sustainable and lasting impact on the New Guineans in all four dimensions of its community: the social, economic, political and cultural. The Sacred Heart mission under the French bishop Louis Couppé ventured in the forefront, establishing mission stations with elementary schools and plantations. The main station Vunapope played an outstanding role with its huge concentration of institutions run by the foreign missionaries: the typical boarding and vocational schools, the orphanage, the workshops, the hospital, the formation institutions for local catechists and religious. The Holy Ghost Mission of the Divine Word Missionaries under the guidance of its first Apostolic Prefect, Father Eberhard Limbrock, a trained blacksmith from Westphalia, Germany and an experienced China missionary, established a chain of mission stations along the Northern coast of New Guinea mainland, from Madang up to the border of Dutch New Guinea. Similar to the MSC mission, the SVD mission developed plantations, established numerous workshops in the central station Alexishafen, built up mission schools and a health care system. The two Marist pioneers, Fathers Eugen Englert and Karl Flaus, German citizens, had mission experience from Fiji and brought a Samoan catechist along with whom they founded their headquarters at Poporang in the Shortland Islands. Up to 1904 the young mission was under the guidance of the Apostolic Vicar from Samoa, Bishop Pierre-Jean Broyer SM. Only then they got their own resident Apostolic Prefect, the Frenchman and Marist priest Fr. Joseph Forestier. In 1901 they established a mission station at Kieta on Bougainville Island, the highly populated main island of their mission territory in the Northern Solomon’s. All missionary congregations working in New Guinea brought their female branches along: the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, the Sisters Servants of the Holy Spirit (SSpS) and the Marist Sisters. Their contribution to the holistic evangelization approach of the Catholic mission is extremely felt in the field of education, the health system, and the vocational training of New Guinean girls and women. The establishment of mission stations with health care centers and schools under the guidance of foreign missionaries allowed the missionaries to exercise a special influence on the local people. Missionaries went regularly for pastoral visits into the hinterlands where they were guests of the local communities. This allowed each side to withdraw any time into their own respective communities while hosting at the same time the members of the other community. This was possible only when both sides interacted with each other and could build up mutual trust. That each side had their own interests in mind does not diminish the achievement of establishing of long-lasting contacts. The intensive study of the local cultures and languages by the missionaries proved the seriousness of the missionary attempts to build a serious relationship with the New Guineans. The same can be said for the local people who invited and hosted the missionaries into their communities, the local communities who sent their children to the mission schools, and the local workers who accepted to be employed and trained by missionary brothers, priests and sisters. They all had an important part in the realization of the missionary project – in education, vocational training and evangelization.

Random Sample

A new species of orchid has been discovered in the primeval tropical forest of the island of New Britain in Papua New Guinea that blooms at night. An Internet psychologist has identified four common characteristics of so-called viral videos. And this week's numbers quantify the amount paid by Gilead Sciences for Pharmasset and the fraction of global energy supply that could be derived from biomass without damaging food production.

Comparative ethnobotany and in-the-field antibacterial testing of medicinal plants used by the Bulu and inland Kaulong of Papua New Guinea

Ethnopharmacological relevanceThe island of New Britain in Papua New Guinea is an area of great floristic and cultural diversity that has received little attention from ethnobotanists. Here we present the results of a comparative medicinal ethnobotanical survey of the Bulu and inland Kaulong; two distinct people groups inhabiting lowland rainforest on different sides of the island. A high proportion of species are used in the treatment of bacterial infections and plants with antibacterial activity were identified in the field using a specially developed antibacterial assay kit. Follow up testing with human pathogens was used to evaluate active plant material in more detail. Materials and methodsRapid appraisal techniques were used to survey both people groups with all data corroborated by three or more separate sources. Plants from both groups were tested in-the-field with a portable antibacterial test kit based on the agar diffusion assay, using a pressure cooker to sterilise glassware and media. Follow up laboratory based tests were carried out using standardised agar dilution protocols for drug resistant and drug sensitive strains of Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus pneumoniae. ResultsWe find surprisingly little overlap in the plant species used by the two people groups with only 1 out of 70 species used for the same purpose. There is also a difference in emphasis in the conditions treated with 53% of Kaulong medicinal plants dedicated to treating tropical ulcers compared with only 8% of in the Bulu group. In-the-field testing identified Garcinia dulcis bark (a Kaulong tropical ulcer treatment) to have antibacterial activity and follow up tests against a drug resistant strain of Staphylococcus aureus (a pathogen implicated in tropical ulcer pathogenesis) revealed the crude bark extract to be potently active with an MIC of just 1mg/ml. ConclusionsThe results demonstrate extreme differences in medicinal plant use between two people groups living a mere 100 km apart and suggests the two medicinal plant systems have developed in isolation from one another. In-the-field antibacterial testing of plant extracts was found to be a valuable technique that enabled early identification of active plant material.

Potential for biological control of Zophiuma butawengi (Heller) (Hemiptera: Lophopidae) in coconut and oil palms using the hymenopterans Ooencyrtus sp. (Encyrtidae) and Parastethynium maxwelli (Girault) (Mymaridae)

The planthopper Zophiuma butawengi (Heller) causes Finschhafen Disorder (FD) of coconut and oil palm in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Field surveys for parasitoids of Z. butawengi were conducted between November 2007 and February 2009. Of the 1059 egg masses collected, 41% were found to be parasitized by an encyrtid (Ooencyrtus sp.) or a mymarid (Parastethynium maxwelli (Girault)) while no parasitoids were recovered from nymphs or adults. Wasps of Ooencyrtus sp. were responsible for 74.8% of the parasitism with the remaining 24.6% caused by P. maxwelli. The average progeny produced per egg mass by Ooencyrtus sp. and P. maxwelli was 20 and 23, respectively, both with female biased sex ratios of 70% and 68%, respectively. P. maxwelli was common on the island of West New Britain but absent from mainland PNG sites, hence offering an opportunity for classical biological control. Laboratory experiments showed that adult longevity of both parasitoids was markedly enhanced by honey and this finding will prove important in future mass rearing attempts for inundative biological control of Z. butawengi. Further experiments involved testing nectar plants as potential food source to the parasitoids. Access to flowers of potential food plants did not significantly improve longevity over a no-food and water treatment. There was a strong response to honey diet, suggesting that screening a wider range of plants is worthwhile to develop conservation biological control.

Actinidine and glucose from the defensive secretion of the stick insect Megacrania nigrosulfurea

1. Subject and sourceMegacrania nigrosulfurea Redtenbacher is a stick insect from the mountainous interior of the island of New Britain (PapuaNew Guinea). The insect was first described by Redtenbacher in 1908 but has not been reported in the wild since(Redtenbacher,1908). In common with some other stick insect species M. nigrosulfurea is able to spray a defensive secretionfrom its prothoraxic glands and approximately 1 ml of the secretion was obtained from 40 insects collected within a 2 kmradius of the village of Paka in the Nakanai Mountains of New Britain, Papua New Guinea (S 0537.5482, E 15106.3832). Themilky colloid-like secretion was collected by holding two screw cap plastic vials against each prothoraxic gland and thenagitating the insect by touching its abdomen. Identification of insect specimens was carried out by Dr Oliver Zompro at theMax-Planck-Institut fuer Limnologie, Germany where voucher specimens are lodged (PHA 10099–PHA 10107).2. Previous workThere are no previous chemical investigations on M. nigrosulfurea.3. Present studyActinidine(1)wasisolatedbyactivity-guidedfractionationofthedefensivesecretionfollowingtheantibacterialactivityoffractions against Staphylococcus epidermidis NCTC 13360 using the well diffusion method. 50

Using remote sensing to inform conservation status assessment: Estimates of recent deforestation rates on New Britain and the impacts upon endemic birds

Remote sensing is increasingly used by policy-makers and conservationists to identify conservation priorities and changes in land cover. This is particularly important in the biodiverse tropics, where there are often few field data. Conservation action is often directed towards areas containing globally threatened species, but there have been few attempts to improve assessments of species’ extinction risk through remote sensing. Here, in a novel approach we use deforestation estimates, measured through satellite imagery, to assess the conservation status of an entire endemic avifauna, based on IUCN Red List criteria. The island of New Britain, east of New Guinea, is of very high global conservation importance, and home to 37 endemic or restricted-range bird species. Analysis suggests 12% of forest cover was lost between 1989 and 2000, including over 20% of forest under 100 m altitude, with substantial areas cleared for commercial oil palm plantations. Application of the IUCN Red List criteria to these new data on area of remaining forest and rates of deforestation indicates that many species are more threatened than previously realised, with the total number of threatened or near threatened species increasing from 12 to 21. Thus, this study highlights the urgency of establishing and effectively managing protected areas in suitable lowland forests of New Britain. More broadly, it demonstrates another potential of remote sensing to assist strategic conservation decisions.

An alien in an archipelago: Spathodea campanulata and the geographic variability of its moth (Lepidoptera) communities in the New Guinea and Bismarck Islands

AbstractAim This analysis of moth (Lepidoptera) communities colonizing an alien tree invading secondary rain forest vegetation in Melanesia examines the predictability of insect herbivorous communities across distances of tens to thousands of km and the effect of dispersal barriers on community composition in the tropics.Location Six secondary rain forest sites were studied within four equidistant yet distinct geographic areas of the New Guinea mainland and the Bismarck Archipelago, including two watershed areas (Madang and Sepik) on mainland New Guinea and the adjacent large island of New Britain and small island of Unea.Methods The analysis is based on feeding records obtained by quantitative sampling and rearing of caterpillars from the alien host Spathodea campanulata (Bignoniaceae). It examines the variation in Lepidoptera community composition at six study sites distributed on three adjacent islands ranging in size from 30 to 865,000 km2.Results Spathodea campanulata was colonized by 54 folivorous species of Lepidoptera. Most of them were generalists, feeding on &gt; 1 native plant family. However, the three most abundant species representing 83% of all individuals (Acherontia lachesis, Hyblaea puera complex and Psilogramma menephron) were relatively host specific, feeding predominantly on a single native family that is not the Bignoniaceae. Most of the 23 species analysed in detail had a wide geographic distribution, including 13 species spanning the entire 1000‐km study transect. While the Lepidoptera in two New Guinea areas 280 km apart were similar to each other, there was a discontinuity in species composition between New Guinea and the smaller islands. However, no negative effect of small islands on species richness was detected.Main conclusions Spathodea campanulata was rapidly colonized by folivorous Lepidoptera communities with species richness and dominance structure indistinguishable from the assemblages feeding on native hosts, despite its phylogenetic isolation from the native vegetation. Although most species were generalists, the highest population densities were reached by relatively specialized species, similar to the communities on native hosts. The species turnover across distances from 10 to 1000 km was relatively low as most of the species had wide geographic ranges.

The trephiners of Blanche Bay, New Britain, their instruments and methods

The trephiners of Blanche Bay, New Britain, their instruments and methods

Thioclava pacifica gen. nov., sp. nov., a novel facultatively autotrophic, marine, sulfur-oxidizing bacterium from a near-shore sulfidic hydrothermal area

Strain TL 2(T) was isolated on mineral medium with thiosulfate from a near-shore sulfidic hydrothermal area in Matupi Harbour on the island of New Britain, Papua New Guinea. The cells varied from long filaments with swollen ends, often aggregated, to short rods, depending on the growth conditions. The bacterium was obligately aerobic and grew autotrophically with thiosulfate as energy source or heterotrophically with organic acids and sugars. In thiosulfate-limited continuous culture, mu(max) and Y(max) for autotrophic growth were 0.1 h(-1) and 3 g protein mol(-1), respectively. From the various reduced sulfur compounds tested, only thiosulfate and sulfide supported active respiration. Inorganic carbon was assimilated via the Calvin cycle. Presence of the 'green'-type of form I RubisCO gene was detected. Growth was possible from 15 to 47 degrees C with an optimum at 35 degrees C, pH 6.5-8.5 with an optimum at pH 8.0, and between 10 and 90 g NaCl l(-1) with an optimum at 35 g l(-1). Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA and cbbL gene sequences demonstrated that strain TL 2(T) forms a separate lineage within the alpha-3 subdivision of the Proteobacteria, distantly related to the genera Rhodovulum and Rhodobacter. On the basis of these results, a novel genus and species, Thioclava pacifica gen. nov., sp. nov., is proposed to accommodate strain TL 2(T) (= DSM 10166(T) = UNIQEM 229(T)).

New Frog of the Genus Platymantis (Amphibia; Anura; Ranidae) from New Britain and Redescription of the Poorly Known Platymantis macrosceles

We describe a new species of high-elevation rain-forest tree frog (genus Platymantis) from New Britain in the Bismarck Archipelago, Papua New Guinea. It is characterized by moderate body size (males 27.4–30.7 mm), widely expanded finger and toe disks, smooth dorsal skin, a distinct reticulate dorsal color pattern, and numerous spectral and temporal characteristics of the advertisement call. The new species inhabits shrub layer vegetation in canopy gaps in primary montane rain forests of the Nakanai Mountain Range above 1500 m. We compare the new species to all known Platymantis from New Britain and to other morphologically similar species from the Bismarck archipelago, Solomon Islands, and Fiji. We also redescribe Platymantis macrosceles from the holotype and two new specimens from the Nakanai Mountains. We suspect that anuran species diversity on the large and topographically complex island of New Britain is currently underestimated.

NOTES ON THE PHALANGERID MARSUPIAL GENUS SPILOCUSCUS, WITH DESCRIPTION OF A NEW SPECIES FROM PAPUA

A new small-bodied species of spotted cuscus is described from Biak and Supiori, neighboring oceanic islands in Cenderawasih Bay, northwest New Guinea. The nonvolant mammal fauna of Biak-Supiori is almost entirely endemic. The geographic origin of another insular species of the genus (Spilocuscus kraemeri) is also discussed: S. kraemeri is a distinctive species known only from the Admiralty Islands but, due to its putative absence from the fossil record of those islands, it is thought to have been introduced there from an unknown source population in prehistoric times. Based on new evidence, we suggest that kraemeri is either native to the Admiralty Islands, or originally differentiated on the large island of New Britain in the Bismarck Archipelago.