(NOTE: This meeting and presentation took place online, via Zoom platform technology, due to social-distancing protocols prompted by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic)
At 7:00 pm, President Ken Chaya called the meeting of the Society to order. He noted that it was the Society’s first meeting of the season as well as its first online meeting, ever. At this point, he announced, a total of 79 viewers were online, watching live. President Chaya extended a welcome to all and thanked the Council, committee members and past presidents for their help. He also shared the success of today’s Society field trip in Central Park, which saw 61 bird species, and he encouraged attendees to visit the LSNY website (www.linnaeannewyork.org) for more information on future Society field trips and programs.
President Chaya explained that the American Museum of Natural History has cancelled all program events through November of this year and that it is possible that the Society will not be able to return to the Linder Theater at the AMNH until sometime in 2021. Until then, we will be bringing our programs online on a monthly basis. He announced that the business portion will start the meeting and the program will follow. Because members recently voted online via email on the acceptance of new members, there was only a single business item on the agenda: the results of that vote. With 114 votes of approval and none of disapproval, President Chaya welcomed the following six new members to the Society:
- Asta Skocir, Active Membership, Sponsored by Chuck McAlexander
- Erika J. Garcia, Active Membership, Sponsored by Chuck McAlexander
- Janet Wooten, Supporting Membership, Sponsored by Andrew Rubenfeld
- Kevin J. Sisco, Active Membership, Sponsored by Ken Chaya, Will Papp, Kathleen Matthews
- William Andrew Haluska, Active Membership, Sponsored by Kathleen Matthews
- Diana Lennon, Active Membership, Sponsored by Ken Chaya
He then invited non-members in attendance to join and explained that they could go about doing so by visiting the LSNY website.
At 7:07 pm, President Chaya introduced Paul Sweet, Collections Manager in the Ornithology Department at the American Museum of Natural History, who presented “Exploring in the 21st Century: Ornithological Fieldwork in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea.” Paul spoke about his work as part of a team of vertebrate specialists from the AMNH who made an expedition to the highlands of Papua New Guinea in 2014. The expedition was in search of new specimens and new species and was part of an AMNH initiative called “Explore 21,” developed to encourage multi-disciplinary, old-school field work using modern techniques.
Papua New Guinea, which lies directly to the north of Australia and the east of Indonesia, is a land area of 178,000 square miles with very few roads. It is composed of 700 islands. The population of 7.3 million is 82% rural, speaks 848 different languages (although most also speak Tok Pisin), and exists primarily on subsistence agriculture. During the Pleistocene era, New Guinea and Australia were part of the same land mass, so they have quite a bit of the same flora and fauna. The fauna of continental Southeast Asia have an abrupt end at the Australia/New Guinea plate. New Guinea is known as a “biodiversity hotspot”: although it only has .5% of the earth’s landmass, it has 5-10% of the earth’s species, with 779 bird species recorded and 621 breeding species. Fifty-nine percent of the birds found in Papua New Guinea are endemics. Paul shared photos of a number of the more unique and colorful avian species found there, including kingfishers, pigeons, doves, and parrots, and a variety of Birds of Paradise, a group for which the country is perhaps best known. He shared that many bird families there are quite diverse, citing as examples: doves, parrots, honeyeaters, whistlers, and kingfishers (of which there are at least 30 different species in PNG.)
Paul highlighted the history of biological exploration of Papua New Guinea, starting with the Magellan Expedition of 1522, which first exposed Europeans to the birds there, through the expeditions of AMNH Ornithologist E. Thomas Gilliard and his wife Margaret, which took place from 1948 through 1964. Paul remarked how little things had changed since the time of Gilliard’s expeditions: today, they still hire guides to hike into the forests carrying equipment and food on foot. In addition to Paul, the 2014 AMNH expedition team included: Brett Benz, Ornithology, Chris Raxworthy, Herpetology, and Neil Duncan, Mammalogy.
First flying into Port Moresby, the team spent several days there stocking up on supplies and were joined by local scientists, PNG National Museum Herpetologist, Bulisa Iova; Ornithologist, Michael Kigl, and Mammalogist, Enock Kale. From there, a pilot, using only sight for navigation, flew them to Mount Hagan and ultimately to Malaumanda, a remote village of homes on stilts with a landing strip in the Highlands. The Highlands, which run like a spine through the center of the country, consist of isolated peaks and valleys and two lowlands that are not in contact — features which contributed to the extensive endemicacy of many of the species there.
After a delay due to a local wedding, they set off for Wigilia Camp, a trip which represented about a 1,000-foot incline and virtually no trails. After spending a night with a local family in their ‘bush house,’ the team finally arrived at base camp, which had been cleared, in advance, by Enok and team, who had departed ahead of the AMNH group.
The team then began their fieldwork, which was essentially collecting and preserving specimens — a more labor-intensive process for the ornithologists than the herpetologists, who were able to simply drop their specimens in formalin for preservation. During their stay at this camp, most of their time was spent preparing specimens in their field lab. The environment was extremely wet and somewhat cold. The herpetologists encountered previously undescribed snakes, as well as an incredible diversity of frogs, including previously undescribed species.
After two-and-a-half-weeks, the team came back down to the village for a few days to dry out, rest, collect specimens at that level, and spend time with some of the villagers. A village shaman went through a field guide with Mike Kigl and shared the local names for many of the birds. (The village’s language is not widespread, so this was a unique opportunity.) The AMNH scientists also blogged from the field via a satellite phone during this time – uploading photos and text directly to the museum.
While at a lower altitude and warmer, their second camp was equally as wet as their first. And, although the second camp was only about 1,000 meters lower, it featured completely different avian fauna. The forest here was much taller and not quite as mossy and wet. Paul shared photos of some of the small mammals collected there, including tube-nosed fruit bats and a newly-discovered species of mouse. He concluded his talk by thanking their locally-based field crew.
At 7:58 p.m., Vice President Rochelle Thomas thanked Paul for his talk and facilitated the Q&A portion of the program. She then passed the floor back to President Chaya, who thanked Paul as well, and invited the audience to return for next month’s program by Johnathan Slaght, “The Salmon-eating Owls of Russia.”
The meeting was adjourned at 8:09 p.m.
Respectfully submitted by Amy Simmons, Acting Recording Secretary