Porch Nick, Smith Tessa R
School of Life and Environmental Sciences & 1Centre for Integrated Ecology, Deakin University, Geelong, VIC 3216, Australia.
Zootaxa. 2017 Feb 26;4237(1):zootaxa.4237.1.8. doi: 10.11646/zootaxa.4237.1.8.
We describe two species of Pycnomerus, P. rimatara and P. prebblei, using subfossil material, from the island of Rimatara in the Austral Archipelago of French Polynesia. We consider it likely that these species are globally extinct, a result of the combination of a range of factors including: their probable single island endemic status, the lack of intact indigenous forest on Rimatara, their occurrence in the subfossil record only in samples older than 200-300 years before the present, and lack of historical collections. The potential extinction of these species reflects the long history of human transformation of Polynesian lowland forest habitats, especially the use of fire to transform landscapes, and parallels extensive and well-known extinctions in birds and land snails.
我们利用亚化石材料描述了两种扁甲属物种，即里马塔拉扁甲（Pycnomerus rimatara）和普雷布尔扁甲（Pycnomerus prebblei），这些材料来自法属波利尼西亚南方群岛的里马塔拉岛。我们认为这些物种很可能已在全球灭绝，这是一系列因素共同作用的结果，这些因素包括：它们可能仅为单岛特有物种、里马塔拉岛上缺乏完整的原生森林、它们仅出现在距今200 - 300年以前的亚化石记录样本中，以及缺乏历史标本。这些物种的潜在灭绝反映了人类对波利尼西亚低地森林栖息地进行改造的悠久历史，尤其是利用火来改变地貌，这与鸟类和陆地蜗牛广泛且广为人知的灭绝情况相似。
