• Cassowary Ecology
• Megapodes
• Large Parrots
• Echidnas
• Bird demography
• Tree demography
• Bird of Paradise studies
• Lowland Bird Phylogeography
• Litter-dwelling Ants

• Montane forest annual cycle and primary productivity
• Biodiversity Surveys
• Gap dynamics and seedling regeneration
• Manus Endemics
• Hunting
• Floristics
• WCS International Marine Coral Reef Program

Research: Cassowary Ecology
This research began in 1987 with studies on seed dispersal and foraging patterns by Andrew Mack and Debra Wright. The work has found that without cassowaries, many large-seeded plants would not be able to establish on the hillsides/tops of NG and plant populations would shrink. It also found that there is a fruiting lean season for 4 months of each year at the Crater Mountain Biological Research Station and that during this time cassowaries either migrate to a different altitude (with different fruiting season) or eat very little while incubating eggs.

The work is currently focusing on methods for detecting home range and movement patterns. We are using camera traps to take pictures of wandering cassowaries, and are using radio transmitters placed in dead rats that the birds eat. We can thus track the birds until the transmitters are defecated. We are also using DNA techniques on epithelial cells found in cassowary droppings to estimate individual home ranges. We have also discovered that cassowary vocalizations extend into the infra sound range undetectable to the human ear.

This photo was taken using a camera trap at Crater Mountain. It shows an adult male caring for its chick many months after hatching. Such data helps us to learn the normal timing of parental care in cassowaries.

Research: Megapodes

Megapode research focuses on four areas:

• habitat (selection of incubation sites, home range, habitat use),

• behaviour at incubation sites (mating systems,

• timing of breeding), population monitoring (line transects),

• harvest management (sustainable harvests form large nesting colonies and individual incubation mounds, impacts of harvesting on temperatures and egg viability in incubation mounds).

This research involves all three genera occurring in New Guinea and both mound-building and island populations of colonial nesting megapodes.

These studies are lead by Ross Sinclair with the assistance of volunteers and trained local assistants from the Crater study area. The overall aim of the research is to generate recommendations in the form of simple management prescriptions useful to land owners and resource users.

Megapodes, like this wattled brush turkey, scrape together huge mounds of leaf litter and lay their eggs within them. These nests are easily found and yield the world's most nutritious eggs. If managed improperly, megapodes will abandon their mounds and the food source will be lost.

Research: Large Parrots

Since 1998 WCS staff biologist Paul Igag has studied Palm Cockatoos, Eclectus Parrots and Vulturine Parrots. These species are vulnerable to logging and hunting, yet they play important roles in the overall ecology of rainforests.

Igag has learned much about their nesting and dietary requirements. U.S. student Gretchen Druliner has also been studying Vulturine Parrots in collaboration with Igag.

The Vulturine Parrot is highly threatened and is valued in traditional trade and custom for its bright red feathers. These unusual parrots endemic to PNG are one of the most specialized frugivores in the world, living almost exclusively on a few species of figs.

 This illustration is by John Gould, who was the first to illustrate many birds of New Guinea and Australia.

Research: Echidnas

The Long-beaked Echidna is one of New Guinea's rarest and most threatened terrestrial vertebrates, yet it had never been studied before WCS-PNG began a major program to learn more about it. WCS intern Muse Opiang has been censusing and radio-tracking these animals in the wild for four years.

Staff biologist Sagata has joined Opiang's efforts to help census and identify invertebrate food items of the echidna. This species is heavily hunted and is extremely vulnerable. Hopefully these data will generate management plans that can save the species from extinction.

The long-beaked echidna is a monotreme (mammals that lay eggs) and is found only in New Guinea. It is actually probably several species, though museum specimens are too few for proper analysis. It has electro-receptors in its beak that help it detect its main prey, subterranean worms

Research: Bird demography

Since 1990 we have been mist-netting and banding birds in the Crater Mountain WMA and these studies continue. They give information on movement patterns, breeding and molting cycles, and longevity.

This is the only long-term banding study underway in the entire New Guinea region.

Already we have documented puzzling population changes in the study area indicating that either bird populations are highly dynamic, or that influences such as global warming are causing changes.

Continuous long-term efforts like this shatter some of the myths about the "stable" tropics derived from casual, short-term studies.

Here a WCS biologist bands a Black Butcherbird. Long-term study of permanently-marked birds shows that this, among other species, seems to come and go in the study area. Clearly conservation planning in PNG, even for understory birds usually considered sedentary, will require protected areas that span large areas to meet all of a species' requirements

Research: Tree demography

We have established 10 ha of permanent plant plots throughout the Crater Mountain WMA to document long-term mortality and recruitment and tree diversity at different elevations. We have also conducted three years of phenological work on all plants within a scattered 4 ha area.

Despite the critical importance of forest resources to the people and economy of PNG, few long-term studies have investigated growth and survivorship of healthy, un-logged forests.

Without such data, it is impossible to analyze the impact of selective logging on the trees that are not cut down.

A trainee on a field course measures the diameter of a tagged tree. Years later this same tree will be measured to determine how quickly it is growing.

Research: Bird of Paradise studies

WCS funds research fellow, Ed Scholes (University of Kansas), who is studying the evolution of Birds of Paradise.

Because of the rapid evolution in this group due to intense sexual selection, it appears that species status is warranted for several taxa previously considered subspecies.

New Guinea is at the heart of modern evolutionary theory; A. R. Wallace, E. Mayr, and E. O. Wilson made their revolutionary discoveries here in part because of the independent evolutionary history of the biota.

The region still promises great discoveries to those who come here.

This Parotia is one of the species under study. Rapid diversification by birds of paradise due to sexual selection has caused forms to appear and behave radically different, even though they are genetically similar.

Research: Lowland Bird Phylogeography

We are currently working in collaboration with Dr. Jack Dumbacher on a National Science Foundation-funded study focused on the distribution of lowland birds across the island of New Guinea.

Using molecular genetic analyses we are examining how distinct populations of widespread lowland birds are, and their patterns of differentiation.

Early analyses indicate that possibly many taxa thought to be a single species are indeed composites of several genetically-different sister species.

Conservation planning for the lowlands might need revision to accommodate this more complex biogeographic pattern.

This Frilled Monarch is just one "species" that has a distinctive subspecies in lowlands in the north of PNG. DNA analyses from our phylogeography study will reveal if the northern race should actually be considered a full species, as some ornithologists have suggested.

Research: Litter-dwelling Ants

Very few ecological studies of insects have been
conducted in PNG, other than insects of direct economic importance and pests. Yet some insects, particularly ants, play crucial roles in rainforest ecosystems.

Staff biologist Katayo Sagata has undertaken rigorous controlled field studies of twig-dwelling ants to learn more about these vital, but little-known cogs in the rainforest ecosystem.

Research: Montane forest annual cycle and primary productivity

Few studies have been undertaken anywhere in PNG through a full annual cycle of a forest to measure timing of flowering, fruiting, and leaf fall.

Moreover, careful measurements of growth and productivity are equally scarce.

However, good measures of productivity are critical for assessing montane forests as carbon sinks, a topic of growing importance as the world grapples for ways to buffer global climate change.

Staff biologist Banak Gamui oversees this project with a large number of trained local assistants at Mekil with technician Andrew Kinnibel assisting in Goroka.

As part of the study of the annual cycle in a montane forest, WCS biologists placed sensitive temperature sensors at different heights in the forest canopy. With these they can determine how minor shifts in temperature over the calendar year create changes in forest productivity.

Research: Biodiversity Surveys

As part of our site-based conservation projects we have conducted biodiversity surveys on plants, birds, mammals and herps at 120, 550, 1450, 2000 and 2800 meters elevation in the Crater Mountain WMA.

We also provide scientific expertise to other conservation projects and have aided surveys in the Hunstein Range (Bishop Museum and National Geographic Society), the Lakekamu Basin and East New Britain (both with Conservation International), and the Huon Peninsula (with Roger Williams Park Zoo).

While engaged on surveys in remote parts of PNG, WCS biologists camp under sheets of plastic tied over frames of sticks. WCS-PNG staff have spent hundreds of days working in such basic conditions in order to reveal what lives where in PNG and to help determine areas of high conservation priority.

Research: Gap dynamics and seedling regeneration

Treefall dynamics and seedling regeneration are widely recognized as critical to the maintenance of high tree species diversity in tropical rainforests.

This topic has been widely studied in the tropics, but few relevant studies have been conducted in New Guinea.

Better knowledge of natural gap dynamics and regeneration will be extremely useful for guiding forestry policy, particularly of small-scale low impact logging using walk about sawmills.

Such logging is widely advocated as an alternative to destructive industrial logging in PNG, but relatively few solid field data exist to guide such logging policy. Trainee Arison Arihafa has established a long-term monitoring project as part of his research at Crater Mountain.

A cluster of Aglaia mackiana seedlings (named for A. Mack of WCS-PNG) grow in a small patch of light in the shaded rainforest floor. WCS-PNG research shows that the size and frequency of light gaps in PNG's forests affect which plant species thrive-- such parameters are dramatically altered by logging, with unknown effects on the next generation of trees.

Research: Manus Endemics

Manus Island is the northernmost island in PNG and is biogeographically distinct. It is home to a diverse endemic biota including endemics in practically every Class: birds, amphibians, etc.

Some of these very distinctive taxa are not closely allied to New Guinea and show possible relations to the Philippine Islands.

Despite this distinctiveness, no active conservation programs are sited in the entire Admiralty Archipelago. WCS-PNG is working with the Provincial Planning office and several landowner groups to create a cross-island conservation project from reef to mountaintop.

The endemic green tree snail of Manus was once highly prized by shell collectors for obvious reasons. Despite this, nothing is known of its habitat requirements, nor if its populations are secure or threatened.

Research: Hunting

For the majority of people in PNG, wild game is a primary source of dietary protein. Everything from frogs and small birds up to tree kangaroos and cassowaries help feed rural people.

Given the near absence of any livestock industry in most of PNG, this vital food source will have no easy replacement if depleted.

WCS, in collaboration with anthropologist Paige West of Columbia University and with David Westcott of CSIRO, are studying just how much game is consumed and how it is obtained in the Crater Mountain Management Area.

Few data exist on offtake of game and none have been related to biological data to determine proper sustainable management.

These boys are smiling because they will be eating meat tonight. Even small children engage in hunting and trapping. Bush meat is a critical resource to the people of PNG that is rarely even mentioned in planning and management discussions.

Research: Floristics

In PNG there are no field guides to plants. Field biologists must collect voucher specimens and hire taxonomic experts to attempt to identify them.

This project is creating a guide to the commonest plants around the Crater Mountain Biological Research Station using computerized keys and digital photographs.

With this guide on a CD or loaded on a palmtop computer, field workers in Crater will be able to identify the majority of trees and vascular plants in the study area.

This is a small selection of the fruits a biologist can find in the Crater forest in a few hours of searching, Currently there is no way to identify these plants in the field.

Research: WCS International Marine Coral Reef Program

For the past two decades the WCS International Marine Program has conducted long-term ecosystem-level monitoring of managed versus unmanaged coral reef areas in Central America and Africa. This program has now expanded to Indonesia and PNG.

Because conservation, research, and monitoring methods will be similar in all of these regions, it will allow WCS to develop an ecosystem-level global coral reef monitoring program. Field studies were first undertaken in 2002 in PNG.

We are currently building on this solid research foundation to initiate a permanent marine research and capacity-building program in PNG that will help identify the best management practices for reef resources and communicate that science back to resource managers.

Blue Angelfish