New Guinea is the largest tropical island in the world, the second-largest island in the world that has fascinated naturalists for centuries, and is part of both eastern Papua New Guinea and western Indonesia. It is a globally recognized center of biological and cultural diversity, with the best-preserved ecosystems and ecological standards on earth, ranging from the unique mangroves of the Asia-Pacific region to the tropical alpine grasslands.
There has been no attempt to critically catalogue the entire vascular plant diversity of New Guinea, So far. Nearly 100 experts completed a comprehensive study and verified checklist includes 13,634 species (68% endemic), 1,742 genera, and 264 families of vascular plants and made it openly available to the global community. It helps to suggest that New Guinea is the most floristically diverse island in the world and that its high level of endemism is unmatched in tropical Asia.
“This is the most mega-diverse island, from a floristic perspective, with 68 percent of plants only found in the region, which is unmatched in tropical Asia,” Dr. Webber said.
Team of 99 researchers from across the globe involved to this research, led by Dr. Rodrigo Cámara-Leret from the University of Zurich, including Dr. Bruce Webber from Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, and was published this week in Nature.
Dendrobium subclausum. Photo: Andre Schuiteman Dendrobium tapiniense. Photo: Andre Schuiteman Bulbophyllum alkmaarense. Photo: Andre Schuiteman
An expert-vetted checklist for New Guinea will be invaluable for conservation planning, as accepted plant names and geographic distributions are the basis of policy-relevant International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List assessment. This checklist will aid in the discovery and characterization of more species by taxonomists.
There are 3,962 species of trees in New Guinea, and these account for 29% of the flora. The most-diverse ‘tree families’ are Myrtaceae (329 tree species), Lauraceae (240), Euphorbiaceae (204), Phyllanthaceae (167) and Moraceae (161). Plant endemism in New Guinea is remarkably high: it is the only Malesian island group with more endemic than non-endemic species. With a known vascular plant flora records in New Guinea, 19 percent larger than the 11,488 species recorded in Madagascar and 22 percent larger than the 11,165 species recorded in Borneo.
Dr Webber said the island’s floral diversity was increasingly under threat from logging, mining, and conversion of forests for subsistence agriculture.
“New Guinea’s flora is also globally important because, along with the Amazon and the Congo, it is one of the last three tropical wilderness areas with around 70 -75 percent of its original forest cover intact,” Dr. Cámara-Leret said. Therefore, it has a major role in carbon dioxide sequestration.
Currently, there are very limited career opportunities for plant taxonomists in Indonesian New Guinea and Papua New Guinea. It is vital to improve professional conditions for taxonomists and reward scientific productivity and merit.
Cover Photo – Lake Murray by Ian Lloyd Neubauer
