Sympatric flightless railsGallirallus dieffenbachiiandG. modestuson the Chatham Islands, New Zealand; morphometrics and alternative evolutionary scenarios

Burrowing seabirds affect forest regeneration, Rangatira Island, Chatham Islands, New Zealand

The forests of Rangatira Island (218 ha) in the Chatham Islands are a critical breeding site for a number of rare and threatened forest bird species, but are also home to more than three million seabirds, which could significantly affect forest regeneration processes. We surveyed the forests of Rangatira Island by establishing 40 permanent forest plots, estimated seabird density through burrow ...

Multibeam bathymetric surveys of submarine volcanoes and mega-pockmarks on the Chatham Rise, New Zealand

Multibeam bathymetric surveys of submarine volcanoes and mega-pockmarks on the Chatham Rise, New Zealand JA Collins a , P Molnar b & AF Sheehan b a Department of Geology and Geophysics, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, US b Department of Geological Sciences and Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), University of Colorado at Boulder...

Forbes' parakeet (Cyanoramphus forbesi) population on Mangere Island, Chatham Islands

Human-mediated extirpation of the unique Chatham Islands sea lion and implications for the conservation management of remaining New Zealand sea lion populations.

While terrestrial megafaunal extinctions have been well characterized worldwide, our understanding of declines in marine megafauna remains limited. Here, we use ancient DNA analyses of prehistoric (<1450-1650 AD) sea lion specimens from New Zealand's isolated Chatham Islands to assess the demographic impacts of human settlement. These data suggest there was a large population of sea lions, uniq...

Distributions of New Zealand Birds on Real and Virtual Islands

This paper considers how habitat geometry affects New Zealand bird distributions on land-bridge islands, oceanic islands, and forest patches. The data base consists of distributions of 60 native land and freshwater bird species on 31 islands. A theoretical section examines how species incidences should vary with factors such as population density, island area, and dispersal ability, in two case...