Herpetofauna assemblage variability in relation to habitat disturbance in Sulawesi, Indonesia: implications for management and conservation of tropical vertebrate biodiversity.

Introduction
Conservation and sustainable development in South-east Asia hinges on identifying important areas to focus limited conservation resources, identifying key threatening processes, and how best to manage them.   This can only be achieved with sound knowledge of relationships between biodiversity and habitat condition and land management.  While relationships between loss of large mammal or bird species and rainforest clearance may be obvious, much of the remaining forests of South-east Asia are subject to other, perhaps less destructive, anthropogenic disturbances.  Biodiversity conservation is by and large dependent upon these habitats. As such, greater understanding of relationships between other species assemblages and habitat modification is necessary to develop sound conservation management practices.

In the past, much wildlife conservation effort has focussed on larger charismatic wildlife species.  However, reptiles and amphibians may comprise the bulk of terrestrial vertebrate diversity in tropical rainforests, but species’ habitat requirements, or how they respond to habitat modification, is poorly known in South-east Asia.  In some parts of the South-east Asian region, such as Sulawesi, little is known about the biology of any species, let alone their conservation status.

Objectives
This research aims to examine herpetofauna (reptile and amphibian) assemblage composition across a range of habitats in South-east Sulawesi, Indonesia, including undisturbed and disturbed forests and more grossly modified habitats, such as human settlements.  Sulawesi is a large equatorial island in the Indonesian archipelago, lying between Borneo and the Maluku (Mollucas) islands.  Its complex geological origins and geographical position have resulted in a distinctive mixture of Australasian and Asian flora and fauna elements, with high levels of endemism across all vertebrate groups. However, despite its biogeographical significance, little is known about the biology of most organisms occurring in Sulawesi.

This project has the following specific objectives:

  1. undertake an inventory of the vertebrate species occurring in the region;
  2. describe new species located;
  3. examine community composition across a gradient of disturbed and undisturbed habitats and,
  4. undertake capacity-building and training of local (Indonesian) personnel)