Evolution of New Guinea’s marsupial fauna in response to a forested environment

Abstract

Four orders of Recent land mammals reached the island of New Guinea before the arrival of prehistoric man: the Monotremata, Marsupialia, Chiroptera and Rodentia. In the Marsupialia the four families now represented in New Guinea are all found also among the six extant families occurring in Australia. These correspond to the 6 New Guinea and 13 Australian families in the check-list of Kirsch and Calaby in this volume. While 14 of the 22 New Guinea genera are found also in Australia, only 11 of New Guinea’s 53 species are shared with Australia. Six of these 11 shared species, along with most of the 42 New Guinea endemic species, are, as described in this paper, primarily forest-adapted forms. This is in marked contrast to the situation in Australia, where the bulk of the marsupial fauna is adapted either to open-land living or at least to habitats other than closed-canopy forests.