What was the vegetation in northwest Australia during the Paleogene, 66–23million years ago?

2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (7) ◽  
pp. 556 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael K. Macphail ◽  
Robert S. Hill
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
National Park ◽  
Pacific Islands ◽  
New Caledonia ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
First Record ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
Dry Conditions

Fossil pollen and spores preserved in drillcore from both the upper South Alligator River (SARV) in the Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory and the North-West Shelf, Western Australia provide the first record of plants and plant communities occupying the coast and adjacent hinterland in north-west Australia during the Paleogene 66 to 23million years ago. The palynologically-dominant woody taxon is Casuarinaceae, a family now comprising four genera of evergreen scleromorphic shrubs and trees native to Australia, New Guinea, South-east Asia and Pacific Islands. Rare taxa include genera now mostly restricted to temperate rainforest in New Guinea, New Caledonia, New Zealand, South-East Asia and/or Tasmania, e.g. Dacrydium, Phyllocladus and the Nothofagus subgenera Brassospora and Fuscospora. These appear to have existed in moist gorges on the Arnhem Land Plateau, Kakadu National Park. No evidence for Laurasian rainforest elements was found. The few taxa that have modern tropical affinities occur in Eocene or older sediments in Australia, e.g. Lygodium, Anacolosa, Elaeagnus, Malpighiaceae and Strasburgeriaceae. We conclude the wind-pollinated Oligocene to possibly Early Miocene vegetation in the upper SARV was Casuarinaceae sclerophyll forest or woodland growing under seasonally dry conditions and related to modern Allocasuarina/Casuarina formations. There are, however, strong floristic links to coastal communities growing under warm to hot, and seasonally to uniformly wet climates in north-west Australia during the Paleocene-Eocene.

Phylogenetic connections of phyllodinous species of Acacia outside Australia are explained by geological history and human-mediated dispersal

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (6) ◽  
pp. 390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gillian K. Brown ◽  
Daniel J. Murphy ◽  
James Kidman ◽  
Pauline Y. Ladiges
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
East Asia ◽  
New Caledonia ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Western Pacific ◽  
Disjunct Distribution ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
Northern Australia ◽  
Australian Species

Acacia sensu stricto is found predominantly in Australia; however, there are 18 phyllodinous taxa that occur naturally outside Australia, north from New Guinea to Indonesia, Taiwan, the Philippines, south-western Pacific (New Caledonia to Samoa), northern Pacific (Hawaii) and Indian Ocean (Mascarene Islands). Our aim was to determine the phylogenetic position of these species within Acacia, to infer their biogeographic history. To an existing molecular dataset of 109 taxa of Acacia, we added 51 new accessions sequenced for the ITS and ETS regions of nuclear rDNA, including samples from 15 extra-Australian taxa. Data were analysed using both maximum parsimony and Bayesian methods. The phylogenetic positions of the extra-Australian taxa sampled revealed four geographic connections. Connection A, i.e. northern Australia?South-east Asia?south-western Pacific, is shown by an early diverging clade in section Plurinerves, which relates A. confusa from Taiwan and the Philippines (possibly Fiji) to A. simplex from Fiji and Samoa. That clade is related to A. simsii from southern New Guinea and northern Australia and other northern Australian species. Two related clades in section Juliflorae show a repeated connection (B), i.e. northern Australia?southern New Guinea?south-western Pacific. One of these is the ?A. auriculiformis clade', which includes A. spirorbis subsp. spirorbis from New Caledonia and the Loyalty Islands as sister to the Queensland species A. auriculiformis; related taxa include A. mangium, A. leptocarpa and A. spirorbis subsp. solandri. The ?A. aulacocarpa clade' includes A. aulacocarpa, A. peregrinalis endemic to New Guinea, A. crassicarpa from New Guinea and Australia, and other Australian species. Acacia spirorbis (syn. A. solandri subsp. kajewskii) from Vanuatu (Melanesia) is related to these two clades but its exact position is equivocal. The third biogeographic connection (C) is Australia?Timor?Flores, represented independently by the widespread taxon A. oraria (section Plurinerves) found on Flores and Timor and in north-eastern Queensland, and the Wetar island endemic A. wetarensis (Juliflorae). The fourth biogeographic connection (D), i.e. Hawaii?Mascarene?eastern Australia, reveals an extreme disjunct distribution, consisting of the Hawaiian koa (A. koa, A. koaia and A. kaoaiensis), sister to the Mascarene (R�union Island) species A. heterophylla; this clade is sister to the eastern Australian A. melanoxylon and A. implexa (all section Plurinerves), and sequence divergence between taxa is very low. Historical range expansion of acacias is inferred to have occurred several times from an Australian?southern New Guinean source. Dispersal would have been possible as the Australian land mass approached South-east Asia, and during times when sea levels were low, from the Late Miocene or Early Pliocene. The close genetic relationship of species separated by vast distances, from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific, is best explained by dispersal by Austronesians, early Homo sapiens migrants from Asia.

The systematics and biology of the spider genus Nephila (Araneae:Nephilidae) in the Australasian region

2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 407 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark S. Harvey ◽  
Andrew D. Austin ◽  
Mark Adams
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
East Asia ◽  
New Caledonia ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
Northern Australia ◽  
Allozyme Data ◽  
New Synonyms ◽  
Nephila Plumipes ◽  
Australasian Region

Five species of the nephilid genus Nephila Leach are found in the Australasian region, which for the purposes of this study was defined as Australia and its dependencies (including Lord Howe I., Norfolk I., Christmas I., Cocos (Keeling) Is), New Guinea (including Papua New Guinea and the Indonesian province of West Papua), Solomon Is, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga, Niue, New Zealand and other parts of the south-west Pacific region. All species are redescribed and illustrated. Nephila pilipes (Fabricius) occurs in the closed forests of eastern and northern Australia, New Guinea, Solomon Is and Vanuatu (through to South-East Asia); N. plumipes (Latreille) is found in Australia (including Lord Howe I. and Norfolk I.), New Guinea, Vanuatu, Solomon Is and New Caledonia; N. tetragnathoides (Walckenaer) inhabits Fiji, Tonga and Niue; N. antipodiana (Walckenaer) occurs in northern Australia (as well as Christmas I.), New Guinea and Solomon Is (through to South-East Asia); and N. edulis (Labillardière) is found in Australia (including Cocos (Keeling) Is), New Guinea, New Zealand and New Caledonia. Epeira (Nephila) walckenaeri Doleschall, E. (N.) hasseltii Doleschall, N. maculata var. annulipes Thorell, N. maculata jalorensis Simon, N. maculata var. novae-guineae Strand, N. pictithorax Kulczyński, N. maculata var. flavornata Merian, N. pictithorax Kulczyński, N. maculata var. flavornata Merian, N. maculata piscatorum de Vis, and N. (N.) maculata var. lauterbachi Dahl are proposed as new synonyms of N. pilipes. Nephila imperialis var. novaemecklenburgiae Strand, N. ambigua Kulczyński, N. sarasinorum Merian and N. celebesiana Strand are proposed as new synonyms of N. antipodiana. Meta aerea Hogg, N. meridionalis Hogg, N. adelaidensis Hogg and N. meridionalis hermitis Hogg are proposed as new synonyms of N. edulis. Nephila picta Rainbow is removed from the synonymy of N. plumipes and treated as a synonym of N. edulis, and N. nigritarsis insulicola Pocock is removed from the synonymy of N. plumipes and treated as a synonym of N. antipodiana. Allozyme data demonstrate that N. pilipes is distinct at the 80% FD level from N. edulis, N. plumipes and N. tetragnathoides. Nephila plumipes and N. tetragnathoides, deemed to represent sister-taxa owing to the shared presence of a triangular protrusion of the male pedipalpal conductor, were found to differ at 15% FD in the genetic study. No genetic differentiation was found between 10 populations of N. edulis sampled across mainland Australia. Species of the genus Nephila have been extensively used in ecological and behavioural studies, and the biology of Nephila species in the Australasian region is extensively reviewed and compared with studies on Nephila species from other regions of the world.

scholarly journals New taxa of extant and fossil primitive moths in South-East Asia and their biogeographic significance (Lepidoptera, Micropterigidae, Agathiphagidae, Lophocoronidae)

2021 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 29-56
Author(s):  
Wolfram Mey ◽  
Théo Léger ◽  
Vu Van Lien
Keyword(s):  
New Species ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Plate Tectonics ◽  
New Caledonia ◽  
Field Work ◽  
First Record ◽  
Morphological Characters ◽  
Wing Venation ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
Australian Region

We report some surprising recent distributional range extensions of one extant genus and two more families of primitive moths discovered in amber fossils from South-east Asia which were previously only known from Australia and/or the southwestern Pacific, with the possible exception of an undescribed Siberian fossil attributed to Lophocoronidae. During entomological field work in rain forests of central Vietnam a new species of Micropterigidae was discovered. It is described herein as Aureopterix bachmaensis sp. nov. based on male and female specimens collected at light in the Bach-Ma National Park. The identification was corroborated by a molecular analysis. This is the first record of this genus in the Northern Hemisphere, previously thought to be restricted to the Australian Region (including New Caledonia). First results of investigations of Burmese amber inclusions now reveal the presence of the Australian Region families Agathiphagidae and Lophocoronidae in the Cretaceous of Asia. The fossil taxon Agathiphagama perdita gen. nov., sp. nov. is established on the basis of two females and this is assigned to Agathiphagidae. The fossil genus Acanthocorona gen. nov. is established in Lophocoronidae and includes seven species described here as A. skalskiisp. nov., A. bowangisp. nov., A. muellerisp. nov., A. kuranishiisp. nov., A. sattlerisp. nov., A. spiniferasp. nov. and A. wichardisp. nov. The new species can be distinguished by the male genitalia which are illustrated together with wing venation and other morphological characters. The disjunct ranges of these taxa are discussed in a historical biogeographic context. Vicariance and dispersal hypotheses explaining the disjunct pattern are discussed. The discovery of these new species suggests a broader ancestral range of Aureopterix, Agathiphagidae and Lophocoronidae. Their extant ranges may be regarded as remnants or relicts of a wider distribution in the Mesozoic, or at least in the case of Aureopterix they could be the results of recent or ancient dispersal processes, since the calibration of molecular splits does not so far accord with plate tectonics.

The eucnemidae of South-East Asia and the Western Pacific — a biogeographical study

1991 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 165 ◽  
Author(s):  
J Muona
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Australian Isolate ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
The South ◽  
Source Areas ◽  
The North ◽  
Eastern Australia ◽  
Australian Continent ◽  
North Eastern

Eighty-nine eucnemid genera occur in the region from South-east Asia to the south-west Pacific. The phylogenies of 84 of these were used together with the present-day distributions of the species to analyse the biogeographical history of the area. Fifty-seven genera shared a pattern coinciding with the traditional model of Laurasia–Gondwana break-up. Six genera showed a pattern contradicting the model. The remaining 21 genera neither supported nor refuted the model. Twenty-five genera were observed to include an Indomalesian clade younger than the South America–Australia connection. This biogeographical unit consisted of present-day South-east Asia and the Sunda islands, but did not include the Philippine Islands and Sulawesi. In addition to this Indomalesian clade, three separate clades involving northern Australia or New Guinea were observed, New Guinea–Australia, New Guinea–Philippines–Sulawesi and New Guinea–Fiji. The possible presence of four separate areas in the general region of New Guinea–north Australia as the result of the Cretaceous geological events is suggested. Three of these, in the area of present-day New Guinea, originally sharing sister-groups with the north-eastern Australian isolate, are regarded as the sources of the New Guinea–Indomalesia, New Guinea–Philippines and New Guinea–Fiji faunas after northward drifting of the Australian continent. During the Oligocene–Miocene these source areas were flooded and their original fauna lost. When the present-day New Guinea emerged, it was invaded from the north-eastern Australian region. This invasion created new New Guinea–Australia connections and brought in the sister-groups of the old New Guinea source areas as well. The eucnemids of Vanuatu, Samoa and Tonga are regarded as having originated in connection with dispersal from Fiji. The New Zealand fauna has strong, old connections with that of south-eastern Australia, but other complex connections are indicated. The Eocene Baltic Amber fauna agrees well with the results obtained from extant species. The species belonging to five fossil genera belong to Gondwanan groups that seem to have invaded the Holarctic via Central America. Four other fossil genera showing discordant patterns belong to the group of six genera exhibiting these aberrant patterns even today. The eucnemid fauna of the region is of Gondwanic origin. Only six Laurasian genera have invaded the area, all of them apparently quite recently.

Rice and Forest Farming in East and South-East Asia

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graeme Barker
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Pacific Islands ◽  
Deciduous Forest ◽  
Yellow River ◽  
Solomon Islands ◽  
Coniferous Forest ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
North East

East and South-East Asia is a vast and diverse region (Fig. 6.1). The northern boundary can be taken as approximately 45 degrees latitude, from the Gobi desert on the west across Manchuria to the northern shores of Hokkaido, the main island of northern Japan. The southern boundary is over 6,000 kilometres away: the chain of islands from Java to New Guinea, approximately 10 degrees south of the Equator. From west to east across South-East Asia, from the western tip of Sumatra at 95 degrees longitude to the eastern end of New Guinea at 150 degrees longitude, is also some 6,000 kilometres. Transitions to farming within this huge area are discussed in this chapter in the context of four major sub-regions: China; the Korean peninsula and Japan; mainland South-East Asia (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, the Malay peninsula); and island South-East Asia (principally Taiwan, the Philippines, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Sulawesi, and New Guinea). The chapter also discusses the development of agricultural systems across the Pacific islands to the east, both in island Melanesia (the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands east of New Guinea) and in what Pacific archaeologists are terming ‘Remote Oceania’, the islands dotted across the central Pacific as far as Hawaii 6,000 kilometres east of Taiwan and Easter Island some 9,000 kilometres east of New Guinea—a region as big as East Asia and South-East Asia put together. The phytogeographic zones of China reflect the gradual transition from boreal to temperate to tropical conditions, as temperatures and rainfall increase moving southwards (Shi et al., 1993; Fig. 6.2 upper map): coniferous forest in the far north; mixed coniferous and deciduous forest in north-east China (Manchuria) extending into Korea; temperate deciduous and broadleaved forest in the middle and lower valley of the Huanghe (or Yellow) River and the Huai River to the south; sub-tropical evergreen broad-leaved forest in the middle and lower valley of the Yangzi (Yangtze) River; and tropical monsoonal rainforest on the southern coasts, which then extends southwards across mainland and island South-East Asia. Climate and vegetation also differ with altitude and distance from the coast.

The first record of the north-west Pacific nemertean Cephalothrix simula in northern Europe

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.A. Faasse ◽  
J.M. Turbeville
Keyword(s):  
First Record ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
West Pacific ◽  
North West ◽  
The North

Dysdercus sidae. [Distribution map].

1970 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
Geographical Distribution ◽  
Host Plants ◽  
Pacific Islands ◽  
New Caledonia ◽  
Solomon Islands ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Distribution Map ◽  
Irian Jaya ◽  
New Hebrides ◽  
New Distribution

Abstract A new distribution map is provided for Dysdercus sidae Montr. (D. insular is Stål) (Hemipt., Pyrrhocoridae). Host Plants: Cotton, kapok, Hibiscus spp. Information is given on the geographical distribution in AUSTRALASIA AND PACIFIC ISLANDS, Australia, Fiji, Loyalty Islands, New Caledonia, New Hebrides, Niue, Papua & New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Wallis Islands, Irian Jaya.

The Decolonisation of the Pacific Islands

Itinerario ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 24 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 173-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Aldrich
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Pacific Islands ◽  
New Caledonia ◽  
Solomon Islands ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
The United States ◽  
French Polynesia ◽  
American Samoa ◽  
Caroline Islands ◽  
Foreign Control

At the end of the Second World War, the islands of Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia were all under foreign control. The Netherlands retained West New Guinea even while control of the rest of the Dutch East Indies slipped away, while on the other side of the South Pacific, Chile held Easter Island. Pitcairn, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, Fiji and the Solomon Islands comprised Britain's Oceanic empire, in addition to informal overlordship of Tonga. France claimed New Caledonia, the French Establishments in Oceania (soon renamed French Polynesia) and Wallis and Futuna. The New Hebrides remained an Anglo-French condominium; Britain, Australia and New Zealand jointly administered Nauru. The United States' territories included older possessions – the Hawaiian islands, American Samoa and Guam – and the former Japanese colonies of the Northern Marianas, Mar-shall Islands and Caroline Islands administered as a United Nations trust territory. Australia controlled Papua and New Guinea (PNG), as well as islands in the Torres Strait and Norfolk Island; New Zealand had Western Samoa, the Cook Islands, Niue and Tokelau. No island group in Oceania, other than New Zealand, was independent.

scholarly journals Etude Eco-Dendrométrique Du Dépérissement Du Cèdre De l’Atlas Dans Le Parc National De Theniet El Had “Algérie”

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (29) ◽  
pp. 112
Author(s):  
Taleb Mohamed Lamine ◽  
Maatoug M’hamed ◽  
Azouzi Blel ◽  
Zedek Mohamed ◽  
Hellal Benchabane
Keyword(s):  
Analysis Of Variance ◽  
National Park ◽  
Ecological Factors ◽  
Management Plan ◽  
Ecological Data ◽  
Descriptive Data ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
The Relationship

This study aims to search the relationship between the decline of the Atlas cedar and the eco-dendrometrique factors in the National Park of Theniet El Had located in the north-west of Algeria. This study takes place throughout 30 circular plots of 1.000m2 area in which, a dendrometric measures and ecological data are taken in addition to descriptive data for Atlas cedar trees. The descriptive data shows that 34% of inventoried Atlas cedar have damaged leaves and 30% have more then 25% of their crowns damaged. The analysis of variance shows that there is no relationship between the rate of the Atlas cedar decline ant the ecological factors, components of the soil and dendrometric parameters except for the average circumference witch is influenced by the competition between trees. Therefor, a particular management plan for the regulation of competition is a necessity for this park.

Ganoderma philippii (red root rot).

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. R. M. Paterson
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Root Rot ◽  
Woody Plant ◽  
New Caledonia ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
Root Pathogen ◽  
Tropical Plantations ◽  
Combat Climate Change ◽  
Plantation Crops ◽  
Significant Disease

Abstract G. philippii was described as a root pathogen that is particularly destructive to tropical plantation crops, especially rubber (Steyaert, 1975a). It occurs on many woody and non-woody plant hosts in South-East Asia through Indonesia to Papua New Guinea and New Caledonia (UK CAB International, 1993). Acacia trees are considered as invasive species and as an economic crop (Koutika and Richardson, 2019) and the significance of the disease is from both aspects. A similar situation exists for other trees such as Eucalyptus (Deus et al., 2019). These trees are being considered to combat climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide and consequently disease is extremely important. Red root rot is a significant disease of tropical plantations in South-East Asia. In severely infected areas in Malaysia, root rot caused more than 40% mortality of Acacia trees aged between 9 and 14 years. In Indonesia, the disease can kill up to 28% of trees in second-rotation A. mangium plantations in Sumatra and Kalimantan. Second rotation A. mangium and A. crassicarpa plantations trees as young as 6 months old may be killed by red root disease (Gafur et al., 2015).

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