The biodiversity of arthropods from Australian rain forest canopies: some results on the role of the tree species

Abstract

Australia’s modest tropical rainforest resources have been recognised both by measures taken to conserve them in recent years and by the establishment of a major Cooperative Research Centre to investigate their biodiversity and dynamics to underpin proper management as well as to generate biological understanding. Investigations of the arthropod biodiversity of the canopy strata have been underway for several years. Over the last two years the focus of this work has moved to include sites in the lowland forests of Cape Tribulation. These canopy studies take a ‘top-down’ approach to biodiversity definition generating, in sequence, ordinal, familial and specific profiles as well as guild structures for particular sites, samples or target trees. Recent work, following earlier hypotheses of Terry Erwin, has included investigations of the tree-species specificity of arthropod assemblages focussing in particular on the Coleoptera. Early results of these studies are presented, in particular relating to the canopy faunas of the very local endemic tree Noahdendron nicholasii and the more widespread Ryparosa javanicum. Difficulties associated with sampling, analysis and the identification of specificity at the level of the assemblage are discussed. Other work in progress and extension of the tree-specificity work under the aegis of the newly proposed Tropical Rainforest Research Centre is foreshadowed.