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  • Tags / Keywords atolls protection
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Maximising conservation impact by prioritising islands for biosecurity
Available Online

Bambini, L.

,

Dawson, J.

,

Havery, S.

,

John, L.

,

Oppel, S.

,

Radford, E.

,

Varnham, K.

2019
Invasive alien species are one of the primary threats to native biodiversity on islands worldwide, and their expansion continues due to global trade and travel. Preventing the arrival and establishment of highly successful invasive species through rigorous biosecurity is known to be more economic than the removal of these species once they have established. However, many islands around the world lack biosecurity regulations or practical measures and establishing biosecurity will require social and financial investments. Guiding these investments towards islands where native biodiversity is at highest risk from potential invasions is of strategic importance to maximise conservation benefit with limited resources. Here we implement an established prioritisation approach, previously used to identify which islands will have the greatest conservation gains from the eradication of invasive species, to identify which islands would benefit the most from establishing or improving biosecurity. We demonstrate this approach for 318 islands in the Caribbean UK Overseas Territories and Bermuda where we considered all threatened native terrestrial vertebrates that are vulnerable to the most harmful invasive vertebrates (black and brown rats, cats, small Indian mongoose, green iguana). The approach calculates the increase in conservation threat score resulting from anticipated negative effects of potential invaders on native biodiversity, and highlighted Sombrero (Anguilla) and Cayman Brac (Cayman Islands) as important islands where threatened reptile species would likely be eliminated if rats, feral cats or mongoose invaded. Feasibility and cost implications should now be investigated more closely on the highlighted islands. The prioritisation presented here can be expanded to more islands and more invasive/native taxa (herbivores, plants and invertebrates), but requires a classification of the severity of potential impacts between invasive and native species for which currently little information exists. Besides highlighting opportunities for biosecurity, this approach also highlights where knowledge gaps about population sizes of and threats to reptiles with restricted ranges exist.
Checklist of the shorefishes of Ouvea atoll, New Caledonia
Island and Ocean Ecosystems
Available Online

Kulbickland Michel

,

Williams Jeffrey T

1997
The shorefishes of Ouvea, an isolated atoll in the Loyalty Islands group of New Caledonia, had not been surveyed prior to 1990. An extensive survey was conducted by ORSTOM between 1991 and 1992 to obtain baseline information on the shorefishes. A total of 653 taxa among 72 families are now documented from this area. The most diverse families are the Labridae (69 species), Pomacentridae (58 species), Gobiidae (54 spccies),Serranidae (39 species), Chaetodontidae (31 species) and Apogonidae (28 species). The absence or very low diversity of some families (Clupeidae, Nemipteridae, Siganidae) or genera (Abudefduf, Neopomacentrus) is similar to findings for other isolated islands of the Coral Sea. Of the 653 species recorded from Ouvea, 51 species have not been reported from New Caledonia, a large high island to the South. Only one endemic species, Luzonichthys williamsi, has been recognized among the shorefishes at Ouvea. A number of Pacific Plate endemic species were recorded at Ouvea. which is positioned on the Australasian Plate to the south of the edge of the Pacific Plate. Antennarius duescus, previously known from three specimens taken at the Hawaiian Islands, is recorded from a single specimen taken at Ouvea. Another antitropical distribution pattern is exhibited by Dinemalichthys riukiuensis, which is known to occur at Fiji, Ouvea and Queensland in the South and from Okinawa.