Floristic relationships of New Caledonian rainforest phanerogams

Structure, function and floristic relationships of plant communities in stressful habitats marginal to the Brazilian Atlantic rainforest.

The Brazilian Atlantic rainforest consists of a typical tropical rainforest on mountain slopes, and stands out as a biodiversity hotspot for its high species richness and high level of species endemism. This forest is bordered by plant communities with lower species diversity, due mostly to more extreme environmental conditions than those found in the mesic rainforest. Between the mountain slop...

How New Caledonian crows solve

16 New Caledonian crows make and use tools and tool types vary over geographic landscapes. Social 17 learning may explain the variation in tool design, but it is unknown to what degree social learning 18 accounts for the maintenance of these designs. Indeed, little is known about the mechanisms these 19 crows use to obtain information from others, despite the question’s importance in understand...

Evolutionary Diversification of New Caledonian Araucaria

New Caledonia is a global biodiversity hotspot. Hypotheses for its biotic richness suggest either that the island is a 'museum' for an old Gondwana biota or alternatively it has developed following relatively recent long distance dispersal and in situ radiation. The conifer genus Araucaria (Araucariaceae) comprises 19 species globally with 13 endemic to this island. With a typically Gondwanan d...

The social structure of New Caledonian crows

Shaping of hooks in New Caledonian crows.

Many animals use tools, but their understanding of physical forces or causal relations is unclear (1, 2). Primates are considered the most versatile and complex tool users, but observations of New Caledonian crows (Corvus moneduloides) (3–5) raise the possibility that these birds may rival nonhuman primates in tool-related cognitive capabilities. We report here an experiment inspired by the obs...