Documenting the Lowland Rainforest Avifauna in Papua New Guinea – Effects of Patchy Distributions, Survey Effort and Methodology

Abstract

Between 1979 and 1993 we conducted five ornithological field surveys of varying duration in the Lakekamu Basin, a large tract of alluvial rainforest in southern Papua New Guinea. 184 species were recorded, 143 classified as forest-dwelling, 76 as obligate forest-dwellers, and 16 as obligate nonforest species. The Lakekamu list is comparable in size to one produced for Brown River (Bell 1982) but differs in composition (70 species confined to one or the other list). The Brown River list included more upland species whereas the Lakekamu list more aquatic and nonforest species. A comparison of censuses from three survey sites within the Lakekamu Basin indicate that a number of forest species are patchily distributed on the local scale, and that replication of forest censuses is difficult to achieve at high resolution. Analysis of mist-netting data from the Basin, when weighed against the effort required, indicates that it is not an efficient survey tool for short-term field surveys of Papuan forest birds. In contrast, the importance of audial censusing is stressed.