Abstract
ISOLATED in the central Pacific Ocean, farther from the continents than any others, with one exception, themselves the relics of volcanoes perhaps of Pliocene age, the Marquesas Islands afford a perfect setting for the study of an oceanic island fauna. The study has been carried out with thoroughness by A. M. Adamson, who spent fifteen months collecting on the Islands and has made a survey of the literature bearing on the problem (Bull. Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Honolulu, 159,·93; 1939). Marquesan animals are related to those of the island groups lying to the west and south-west, Samoa, Society, Cook, etc., but they show little affinity to the fauna of Hawaii. The faunal drift has been ultimately from the Indo-Malayan region, with a sprinkling of Australian forms, but whether the Islands were populated by oceanic dispersal or by way of hypothetical land bridges seems difficult to decide, and the author gives the arguments for and against both possibilities. Whatever the origin of the fauna, it dates from not later than early Tertiary times, and as might be expected isolation has resulted in the development of a high proportion of species distinctive of the Islands, although between the isolated islands of the group, variations are pronounced only in certain families. Naturally the fauna contains a varied assortment of species, particularly mammals and birds, introduced by man, some, such as the so-called ‘native’ rats and pigs, probably by the early Polynesian voyagers, and all the other mammals, with the doubtful exception of dogs and mice on some of the Islands, by white adventurers.
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Fauna of the Marquesas Islands. Nature 144, 1007–1008 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/1441007c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1441007c0