Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
the many requests by other islanders for baby monkeys which suggest the pos-
sibility that baby macaques are, or have been at times, a cash crop.
The macaques are a dispersal agent of the Palaun apple or
rebotel
, the trop-
ical almond or
meiich
(
Terminalia catappa
), and
Macaranga carolinensis
(Farslow,
1987
and Wheatley
et al
.,
2002
). We were shown how to crack open
meiich
during our fieldwork in 1994. The local people also made some candy
from the nuts and shared it with us.
Introduced species
Many species besides macaques have been introduced either intentionally
or inadvertently to Ngeaur and to Palau in general. Palau has been acquir-
ing new species ever since it emerged from the ocean some 30 million years
ago (Crombie and Pregill,
1999
). Other introduced species to Ngeaur besides
macaques include rodents
Rattus rattus
,
R. exulans
, and
R. norvegicus
and
Mus
musculus
and the Asiatic musk shrew,
Suncus murinus
, (Crombie and Pregill,
1999
; Pregill and Steadman,
2000
). Several invasive species of fruit flies
threaten the fruit crops such as mountain apple, carambola, guava and bananas
(Anon.,
2002
). Epidemic outbreaks of dengue fever possibly from the intro-
duced mosquitos
Aedes aegypti
and
A
.
albopictus
occur periodically such as
in 1988, 1995 (Ashford
et al
.,
2003
) and 2007 (Mesekiu's News,
2007
). These
diseases also pose a threat to many other species of wildlife. The determination
of native species as opposed to invasive species can be somewhat tricky as van
Leeuwen
et al
., (
2008
) found on the Galapagos Islands using pollen samples.
These researchers reclassified six presumed introduced species as native after
finding pollen samples that predated European contact.
M. fascicularis
is tagged as “one of the 100 worst invasives in the world”
(Lowe
et al
., 2000). Recently, however, because of losses due to extreme trade
pressures,
M. fascicularis
will probably be categorized among the “primates
still widespread but rapidly declining” (Eudey,
2008
). Ninety-nine percent of
all imported primate species into the US are
M. fascicularis
(Thirlway,
2009
).
Most of these animals are used for biomedical research.
Discussion
The simplest and most cost-effective management priority is to prevent inva-
sive species from gaining a foothold in a country (McNeely
et al
.,
2001
). The
macaques of Ngeaur have spread throughout the island and have lived there
for over one hundred years. The macaques are very prolific. Farslow (
1987
)
