Butterflies as potential bioindicators of primary rainforest and oil palm plantation habitats on New Britain, Papua New Guinea.

Our research team worked with Nakanai land-holders in Papua New Guinea to perform the first survey of butterflies in the Lake Hargy caldera of West New Britain Province. Methods included modified Pollard transects quantifying sampling effort based on aerial netting and visual observations, as well as traps baited with fermenting fruit. Results were compared with surveys on the adjacent Hargy Oil Palm plantation. Our sampling yielded 312 specimens representing 73 species; of these, 50 were limited to primary rainforest, 12 to oil palm plantation and 11 species occurred at both sites. Four species are newly recorded for New Britain, including one potentially invasive species on Citrus. Singleton specimens made up the largest abundance class in the data set, representing 34% of records in primary rainforest. Sixty-two percent of the butterfly taxa recorded are regionally endemic to the Bismarck island chain or to New Britain in particular. Calculated levels of similarity between sites ranged from 0.151 to 0.262, suggesting the oil palm and rainforest habitats supported highly distinct species assemblages. Although rapid assessment data such as these are necessarily limited in scope, they can still aid in documenting the impact on biodiversity from conversion of primary tropical rainforest to oil palm monoculture.

Download Full-text

Enacting the Absent State: State-formation on the oil-palm frontier of Pomio (Papua New Guinea)

10.31235/osf.io/zgrnq ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Tuomas Tammisto

Keyword(s):

Papua New Guinea ◽

State Formation ◽

Oil Palm ◽

New Guinea ◽

The State ◽

Rural District ◽

Top Down ◽

Active Worker ◽

The Relationship ◽

New Britain

Tammisto, Tuomas 2016. Enacting the Absent State: State-formation on the oil-palm frontier of Pomio (Papua New Guinea). Paideuma: Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde 62: 51-68. In this article I examine the relationship between new oil-palm plantations and state-formation in Pomio, a remote rural district of East New Britain Province (Papua New Guinea). I am particularly interested in the kinds of spaces of governance produced by the new oil-palm plantations and how this contributes to state formation and territorialisation in Pomio.Plantations in Pomio do not became state-like spaces as a result of top-down processes alone, but also because of active worker initiatives. By contributing to state formation in this way, the inhabitants of Pomio also make claims on what the state should be like. While plantations become governable and statelike spaces, they do not produce simply governable subjects, nor do they produce a uniformly governable territory but an uneven space in which some places are more governable than others. The inhabitants of Pomio move between these places in their pursuit of different goals.

Download Full-text

Malaria – a major health problem within an oil palm plantation around Popondetta, Papua New Guinea

Malaria Journal ◽

10.1186/1475-2875-8-56 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Bianca Pluess ◽

Ivo Mueller ◽

Damien Levi ◽

Graham King ◽

Thomas A Smith ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Papua New Guinea ◽

Health Problem ◽

Oil Palm ◽

New Guinea ◽

Major Health Problem ◽

Major Health ◽

Oil Palm Plantation

Download Full-text

Ant Species Diversity, Distribution, and Community Composition in Different Forest Types in Papua New Guinea

Case Studies in the Environment ◽

10.1525/cse.2021.1342727 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Jacob Yombai ◽

Petr Klimes ◽

Paul Dargusch ◽

Aloysius Posman ◽

Ondrej Mottl ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Species Richness ◽

Species Diversity ◽

Sea Level ◽

Papua New Guinea ◽

Community Composition ◽

Scientific Information ◽

New Guinea ◽

Sampling Effort ◽

Forest Types ◽

The Impact

Previous studies have provided important scientific information on ant species richness and composition relating to the effects of elevation, sampling approaches, stratification, and forest succession. Yet, they have primarily focused on single sites or regions. Knowledge of ant ecology should also include the impact of disturbance in various forest types. Tuna baiting and hand collection methods were used to investigate diversity and community composition of ants in 16 sites sampled across Papua New Guinea, in both disturbed and pristine forest, at heights ranging from 28 to 2,728 m above sea level. We found 176 species as a result of exposing 320 tuna baits and traversing 72 hand-searched plots. Baiting samples were strongly dominated by a few common species, while the hand-collecting captured more species per plot. The Chao 2 richness estimator for both methods predicted undersampling of the local community. As expected, ant species diversity and richness significantly decrease with increasing elevation. We observed, on average, greater species diversity of ground-dwelling ant communities in disturbed compared to undisturbed forests. The effect was not significant using multivariate randomisations, since the same species dominated both forest classes. The unexpected pattern of ant species richness being locally higher in the disturbed sites is driven by our sampling of undisturbed communities at all elevations, but sampling of the disturbed communities only up to 1,600 m above sea level. Hence, future studies should consider more locations, aiming ideally for an equal sampling effort to capture disturbance stage and elevation.

Download Full-text

Conservation status of threatened and endemic birds of New Britain, Papua New Guinea

Bird Conservation International ◽

10.1017/s0959270917000156 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 28 (3) ◽

pp. 439-450

Author(s):

ROBERT A. DAVIS ◽

GUY DUTSON ◽

JUDIT K. SZABO

Keyword(s):

Population Size ◽

Papua New Guinea ◽

Oil Palm ◽

Conservation Status ◽

Bird Species ◽

New Guinea ◽

Old Growth Forest ◽

Population Size Estimates ◽

New Britain ◽

Size Estimates

SummaryNew Britain in the Bismarck Archipelago of Papua New Guinea supports 14 endemic bird species and together with New Ireland, forms an Endemic Bird Area that supports 38 restricted range species. Extensive conversion of lowland forest to oil palm plantations resulted in the loss of over 20% of forest under 100 m altitude between 1989 and 2000. However the rate of loss has subsequently slowed (2.2% loss across all altitudes between 2002 and 2014), and much forest remains at higher altitudes: 72% of New Britain remained forested (including secondary forest) in 2014. Despite the ongoing high threat and rich endemic bird fauna, the state of knowledge of the conservation status of birds in New Britain is very poor. We use an unprecedented dataset based on 415 hours of bird surveys conducted in oil palm plantations, as well as primary and secondary forests at all altitudes, to revise the IUCN status of New Britain’s birds. These data indicate that six species of elevated conservation concern are less dependent on old-growth forest than previously assessed. We recommend reduced population size estimates for one species, New Britain Kingfisher Todiramphus albonotatus. We recommend increased population size estimates for seven species: Pied Cuckoo-dove Reinwardtoena browni, Yellowish Imperial Pigeon Ducula subflavescens, Green-fronted Hanging Parrot Loriculus tener, Blue-eyed Cockatoo Cacatua opthalmica, Violaceous Coucal Centropus violaceous, New Britain Boobook Ninox odiosa and New Britain Thrush Zoothera talaseae. Despite our comprehensive surveys, Slaty-backed Goshawk Accipiter luteoschistaceus, New Britain Sparrowhawk Accipiter brachyurus, New Britain Bronzewing Henicophaps foersteri and Golden Masked-owl Tyto aurantia remain very rarely recorded and require further assessment. With ongoing habitat loss, particularly in lowland areas, New Britain’s birds urgently require more attention.

Download Full-text

Enacting the Absent State: State-formation on the oil-palm frontier of Pomio (Papua New Guinea)

10.31219/osf.io/dfa4b ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Tuomas Tammisto

Keyword(s):

Papua New Guinea ◽

State Formation ◽

Oil Palm ◽

New Guinea ◽

The State ◽

Rural District ◽

Top Down ◽

Active Worker ◽

The Relationship ◽

New Britain

In this article I examine the relationship between new oil-palm plantations and state-formation in Pomio, a remote rural district of East New Britain Province (Papua New Guinea). I am particularly interested in the kinds of spaces of governance produced by the new oil-palm plantations and how this contributes to state formation and territorialisation in Pomio.Plantations in Pomio do not became state-like spaces as a result of top-down processes alone, but also because of active worker initiatives. By contributing to state formation in this way, the inhabitants of Pomio also make claims on what the state should be like. While plantations become governable and statelike spaces, they do not produce simply governable subjects, nor do they produce a uniformly governable territory but an uneven space in which some places are more governable than others. The inhabitants of Pomio move between these places in their pursuit of different goals.

Download Full-text