The Marvel of New Guinea Birds | Jared Diamond

This event is presented collectively by the British Ornithologists' Club and the Linnean Society of London. It was live-streamed at the Linnean Society, Piccadilly (London), on October 6, 2022.

The tropical island of New Guinea has for a long time played a preeminent role in ornithology. Part of the reason is New Guinea’s many species of extraordinary birds, such as its birds of paradise, whose male ornamental plumages carry sexual selection to extremes; its bowerbirds, whose males build the most elaborate display structures among animals; its megapodes, the only birds that incubate their eggs by natural heat sources rather than by body heat; its diversity of parrots and kingfishers, orders that probably evolved in New Guinea; its Greater Melampitta, the only passerine known to roost underground; and its many bird groups convergent on but unrelated to the nuthatches, creepers, warblers, finches, wrens, and sunbirds of the rest of the world.

Another reason is New Guinea’s equatorial location combined with its high mountains, resulting in a range of habitats from tropical rainforest in the lowlands to glaciers on the highest peaks at 5000 m. Yet another reason is its simple geographic layout: a single central cordillera with montane allospecies arranged from west to east, separating northern and southern lowlands with lowland allospecies arranged in a ring. New Guinea shouldn’t be thought of as the world’s largest tropical island, but instead as the smallest continent. New Guinea has proved to be ideal terrain for studying speciation, ecological segregation, and other biological phenomena. New Guineans themselves are walking encyclopedias of knowledge about their birds. The illustrated talk will explore these and other features that make New Guinea birds special. The only disadvantage to visiting New Guinea is that, thereafter, you’ll find the rest of the world boring by comparison.

Jared Diamond is a Pulitzer-prize-winning author of five best-selling books. As a professor of geography at UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles), he is known for his breadth of interests, which involves conducting research and teaching in three other fields: the biology of New Guinea birds, digestive physiology, and conservation biology. As a biological explorer, his most widely publicized finding was his rediscovery, at the top of New Guinea’s remote Foja Mountains, of the long-lost Golden-fronted Bowerbird, previously known only from four specimens found in a Paris feather shop in 1895.

All photos by David Bishop.
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The Linnean Society works to inform, involve and inspire people of all ages about nature and its wider interactions through our collections, programmes and publications. Founded in 1788, the Society takes its name from the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778).

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[bradsillasen]

@49:56 ...say what? No way, Mixed flocks in neotropical forests are very diverse in colors/patterns. That's what makes it so fun. I witnessed this first hand on a rain forest tram in Costa Rica.

[ambulocetusnatans]

I didn't quite understand his definition of a continent. There was speciation on the Galapagos Islands, so are they considered a continent by this definition?