The mammal fauna of Kofiau Island, off western New Guinea

Abstract

Kofiau’s terrestrial mammal fauna shares many taxa with oceanic islands lying close to New Guinea. Its fauna is distinctive in possessing a mixture of Moluccan near-endemics, such as Pteropus chrysoproctus, along with Melanesian species, like Dobsonia beauforti, that reach their westernmost limit on Kofiau. Very little has been published on the terrestrial vertebrate fauna on Kofiau compared to the adjacent islands. This paper presents two surveys of the terrestrial mammal fauna of Kofiau Island, undertaken in 2011 and 2019, increasing the number of species recorded from the island from 1 to 20: one rodent, two marsupials and 17 bats. Wiantoro, Sigit, Tim F. Flannery, Dan Brown, Kyle N. Armstrong, and Kristofer M. Helgen. 2023. The mammal fauna of Kofiau Island, off western New Guinea. In Contributions to Mammalogy and Zooarchaeology of Wallacea, ed. K. M. Helgen and R. K. Jones. Records of the Australian Museum 75(5): 653–662.

Keywords

• raja ampat
• biogeography
• bat echolocation
• biodiversity survey