Unlike their Australian cousins very little is known about the two quoll species endemic to New Guinea.  The bronze quoll (Dasyurus spartacus) has the most restricted distribution of all quolls found only in an area of approximately 35,000 km² of monsoon forest and savannahs in the TransFly Ecoregion of Southern New Guinea. Dr. Tim Flannery describes the absence of the bronze quoll from the tip of Cape York as enigmatic in his 1995 mammals of New Guinea publication. It is the only mammal species truly endemic to this Ecoregion, absent from Northern Australia, other regions of New Guinea and the Aru Islands and has an estimated population below 10,000 individuals.  Conversely the New Guinea quoll (D. albopunctatus) occurs in a range of habitats from 400- 3800m in elevation across New Guinea from east to west throughout the central mountain cordillera and northern regions. It has the largest current continuous distribution of all the quolls, the four Australian species undergoing reductions in distribution and fragmentation of populations over the last 200 years.  Despite this precedence the conservation status of both New Guinean quoll species is poorly understood. Mitochondrial and microsatellite DNA is being used to characterise population sub divisions within the New Guinea quoll and to further contextualise the degree of divergence of the bronze quoll from the closely related Australian western quoll (D. geoffroii).  Comparisons of intraspecific phylogeography with other Trans Torresian mammalian species that have populations common to both Southern New Guinea and Northern Australia will also be examined to help unravel the evolutionary history of the bronze quoll. 

 

For most of the last 250,000 years Australia and New Guinea have been connected by land across the shallow body of water that currently separates them (Gulf of Carpentaria). The most recent connected Cape York with New Guinea 10,000 years ago "bridging" the twelve meter deep Torres Strait.  The land bridge and other geological events make New Guinea Australia's most recent zoogeographic province. Some mammals common to areas straddling the Torres Strait include; Northern Brown Bandicoot (Isoodon macrourus), Long-nosed Echymipera (Echymipera rufescens), Agile Wallaby (Macropus agilis), Red legged Pademelon (Thylogale stigmatica), Spectacled-hare Wallaby (Lagorchestes conspicillatus), Water Rat (Hydromys chrysogaster), Giant White-tailed rat (Uromys caudimaculatus), Prehensile tailed Rat (Pogonomys mollipilosus), Canefield Rat (Rattus sordidus), Cape York Rat (Rattus leucopus), Sugar Glider (Petaurus breviceps), Striped Possum (Dactylopsila trivirgata),  Short-beaked Echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus), Greater Long-eared Bat (Nyctophilus timoriensis), Golden-tipped bat (Phoniscus papuensis), Flute-nosed Bat (Murina florium) and several others.  In all a total of 44 terrestrial mammal species from New Guineas TransFly area can be found with populations across the Torres Strait in Northern Australia.  With some restricted to the TransFly and Cape York and others more widespread this constitutes a unique mix of mammal species, some more commonly associated with New Guinea and others more characteristic of the Australian mammal fauna.  The repeated exposure of land bridges and the extent of climate and sea level change since the Pilocene (1.8 mya) have presented many opportunities for the exchange of fauna and mixing of populations in both directions between the two currently separate land bodies.  Finding genetic patterns within mammal species that occur on both sides of the Strait and correlating these to land bridge facilitated dispersal will help explain why the Bronze quoll is not present in Cape York. Conversely it may also help us understand why the most distantly related Australian northern quoll (D. hallucatus) present in Cape York, is not present in New Guinea.

 

The project is funded by an ARC linkage grant for the development of conservation management strategies of quoll species through the application of molecular ecology. 

 

 

 

Hipposideros cervinus & moth