Biogeography of Tongan birds before and after human impact.
Open Access
- 1 February 1993
- journal article
- Published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Vol. 90 (3) , 818-822
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.90.3.818
Abstract
Bones deposited in caves show that, before the arrival of humans, at least 27 species of land birds lived on the Tongan island of 'Eua, where 13 indigenous species live today. Six of these 13 species were recorded from pre-human strata; three others probably occurred on 'Eua in pre-human times but were not in the fossil sample; and four others probably colonized 'Eua since the arrival of humans approximately 3000 years ago. Of the 23 species of extinct or extirpated land birds recorded from 'Eua, the nearest geographic occurrences of conspecifics or most closely related congeners are from the Solomon Islands (1 species), New Caledonia (2 species), Fiji and/or Samoa (9 species), elsewhere in Tonga (8 species), or unknown (3 species). The avifauna of West Polynesia (Fiji-Tonga-Samoa) is more closely related to that of Melanesia than that of East Polynesia. There was little pre-human turnover in Tongan land birds. The arrival of humans has influenced the Tongan avifauna more than any climatic, tectonic, or biological event of the past approximately 100,000 years.Keywords
This publication has 7 references indexed in Scilit:
- Prehistoric extinction of birds on Mangaia, Cook Islands, Polynesia.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1990
- Radiocarbon dates on bones of extinct birds from Hawaii.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1987
- Bird remains from an archaeological site on Henderson Island, South Pacific: Man-caused extinctions on an “uninhabited” islandProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1985
- Species Turnover Rates on Islands: Dependence on Census IntervalScience, 1977
- Species-area relation for birds of the Solomon ArchipelagoProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1976
- Comparison of Faunal Equilibrium Turnover Rates on a Tropical Island and a Temperate IslandProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1971
- AVIFAUNAL EQUILIBRIA AND SPECIES TURNOVER RATES ON THE CHANNEL ISLANDS OF CALIFORNIAProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1969