owady: Biodiversity of New Caledonia

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

The biodiversity of New Caledonia is of exceptional biological and paleoecological interest. It is frequently referred to as a biodiversity hotspot. The territory is a large South Pacific archipelago with a total land area of more than 18,000 square kilometres (6,900 sq mi). The terrain includes a variety of reefs, atolls, small islands, and a variety of topographical and edaphic regions on the largest island, all of which promote the development of unusually concentrated biodiversity. The region's climate is oceanic and tropical. New Caledonia is separated from the nearest mainland by more than 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) of open sea. Its isolation dates from at least the mid-Miocene, and po…

Evidence: 42 • authority: 92

A predictive framework for identifying source populations of non-native marine macroalgae: <i>Chondria tumulosa</i> in the Pacific Ocean.. The cryptogenic marine red alga Chondria tumulosa was first observed in 2016 in subtidal habitats at Manawai (Pearl and Hermes Atoll) in the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument (PMNM), Hawai'i. Without molecular or morphological matches to any known species, it was described in 2020 and declared cryptogenic. This alga has substantially increased in benthic cover and has been discovered on two additional atolls in PMNM: Kuaihelani (Midway) and Hōlanikū (Kure). It exhibits several characteristics indicative of non-native origins includin…

Evidence: 42 • authority: 92

Coastal flood impacts and lost ecosystem services along Europe's outermost regions and overseas countries and territories.. Climate change is expected to result in rising seas, exacerbating coastal floods and erosion. Remote islands are projected to be among the most challenged regions, due to their geographic isolation and fragile economies. While, Small Island Developing States have been attracting the attention of scientists and policy makers, Europe's Outermost Regions (ORs) and Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) remain poorly studied in terms of their impacts from Sea Level Rise (SLR). Here we carry out a data-modelling framework to comprehensively study risks of flooding, the s…

Evidence: 42 • authority: 72

The Solomon Islands archipelago is an island group in the western South Pacific Ocean, north-east of Australia. The archipelago is in the Melanesian subregion and bioregion of Oceania and forms the eastern boundary of the Solomon Sea. The many islands of the archipelago are distributed across the sovereign states of Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands. The largest island in the archipelago is Bougainville, which is a part of an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea along with Buka Island, the Nukumanu Islands, and a number of smaller nearby islands. Much of the remainder falls within the territory of Solomon Islands and include the atolls of Ontong Java, Sikaiana, the raised coral atolls o…

Evidence: 42 • authority: 72

The New Caledonian barrier reef is a barrier reef located in New Caledonia in the South Pacific, being the longest continuous barrier reef in the world and the third largest after the Great Barrier Reef of Australia and the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef. The New Caledonian barrier reef surrounds Grande Terre, New Caledonia's largest island, as well as the Ile des Pins and several smaller islands, reaching a length of 1,500 kilometres (930 mi). The reef encloses a lagoon of 24,000 square kilometres (9,300 sq mi), which has an average depth of 25 metres (82 ft). The reefs lie up to 30 kilometres (19 mi) from the shore, but extend almost 200 kilometres (120 mi) to the Entrecasteaux reefs in the no…

Evidence: 41 • authority: 92

Three-dimensional conservation planning of fish biodiversity metrics to achieve the deep-sea 30×30 conservation target.. Accelerating rate of human impact and environmental change severely affects marine biodiversity and increases the urgency to implement the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) 30×30 plan for conserving 30% of sea areas by 2030. However, area-based conservation targets are complex to identify in a 3-dimensional (3D) ocean where deep-sea features such as seamounts have been seldom studied mostly due to challenging methodologies to implement at great depths. Yet, the use of emerging technologies, such as environmental DNA combined with modern modeling frameworks, could h…

Evidence: 41 • authority: 92

Assessing responses of reef island seabirds to environmental and anthropogenic drivers.. Tropical insular ecosystems face escalating, cumulative impacts of land- and sea-based ecological threats that jeopardize the long-term sustainability of their native communities. This joint vulnerability is epitomized by reef island seabirds, which are exposed to reef decline and coastal erosion driven by climate change, reduction in prey availability, human disturbance, and predation by invasive non-native species. Using site monitoring data acquired from 2000 to 2023, we investigated drivers of species presence and abundance for 15 seabird species (nine Laridae, three Sulidae, two Fregatidae, and one…

Evidence: 36 • authority: 72

A coral reef is an underwater ecosystem characterized by reef-building corals. Reefs are formed of colonies of coral polyps held together by calcium carbonate. Most coral reefs are built from stony corals, whose polyps cluster in groups. Coral belongs to the class Anthozoa in the animal phylum Cnidaria, which includes sea anemones and jellyfish. Unlike sea anemones, corals secrete hard carbonate exoskeletons that support and protect the coral. Most reefs grow best in warm, shallow, clear, sunny, and agitated water. Coral reefs first appeared 485 million years ago, at the dawn of the Early Ordovician, displacing the microbial and sponge reefs of the Cambrian. Sometimes called rainforests of…

Evidence: 36 • authority: 92

Cryptic Divergence of <i>Rochia nilotica</i> (Gastropoda: Tegulidae) from Chuuk Lagoon, Federated States of Micronesia, Revealed by Morphological and Mitochondrial Genome Analyses.. Rochia nilotica is a tropical Pacific gastropod inhabiting shallow coral reef habitats and supporting important marine resources in Pacific island nations. In this study, we analyzed specimens collected from Weno Island, Chuuk Atoll, Federation States of Micronesia (FSM), using an integrative approach that combined morphological characteristics, molecular phylogenetics (COX1 and 16S rRNA), and complete mitochondrial genome analysis. While the Chuuk population exhibited morphological features consiste…

Evidence: 35 • authority: 80

Structure and biodiversity of nematode assemblages in the SW lagoon of New Caledonia

Evidence: 35 • authority: 72

Kingman Reef () is a largely submerged, uninhabited, triangle-shaped reef, geologically an atoll, 9.0 nmi (20 km) east-west and 4.5 nmi (8 km) north-south, in the North Pacific Ocean, roughly halfway between the Hawaiian Islands and American Samoa. It has an area of 3 hectares (0.03 km2; 7.4 acres) and is an unincorporated territory of the United States in Oceania. The reef is administered by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service as the Kingman Reef National Wildlife Refuge. It was claimed by the United States in 1859 and later used briefly as a stopover for commercial Pacific flying boat routes in the 1930s going to New Zealand; however, the route was changed with a different stopove…