Collaborative Research: A Biotic Inventory of Terrestrial Vertebrates, Spiders, and Haemosporidian Parasites of Sulawesi, Indonesia

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The Indonesian island of Sulawesi is unusually rich in species and therefore is an important location for biodiversity discovery. This research project will inventory terrestrial vertebrates (amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals), spiders, and vertebrate parasites of this large tropical island. Field teams composed of specialists on each of these taxonomic groups will survey 10 major mountains on Sulawesi over the course of five field seasons. By thoroughly sampling this island now while some forest remains fully intact and depositing these collections in natural history museums, the raw materials (specimens) supporting the study of tropical diversification will be made available to this and future generations of biological researchers. This project includes training of undergraduate and graduate students, postdocs, and technicians from US and Indonesian research institutions in biotic survey research. Senior Indonesian scientists will aid US researchers in a collaborative analysis of specimens. The research team will organize two workshops primarily oriented around molecular genetic data collection and analysis, including high-throughput sequence data, and corresponding population genetic, phylogenetic, and biogeographical analysis. Sulawesi is characterized by a highly endemic biota, resulting from its large size, geographic setting, long period of isolation from all other land masses, and complex tectonic history. The island exhibits substantial topographical relief, with vast areas over 1000 m above sea level, 20 summits greater than 2500 m in height, and six summits above 3000 m. It probably has never been connected to the more proximate Sunda continental shelf to its west, nor with the more distant Sahul Shelf (New Guinea, Australia, and their land-bridge islands) to its east, and thus has been isolated for its entire history of 20-25 million years. Sulawesi is a composite island composed of at least five paleo-islands that were distantly separated from one another for several million years before merging more or less simultaneously between 10 and 5 million years ago. The composite nature of the island has been strongly implicated in the process of in situ species diversification on Sulawesi. Field sites for biotic survey work were selected to allow thorough sampling of the four arms of Sulawesi as well as its Central Core. A major focus of the program will be sampling along elevational transects on the largest mountains of each Area of Endemism, thereby enabling transects that reach 2500 m in elevation. None of the focal taxa targeted here have been sampled adequately from high elevation sites. The scientific value of the proposed field efforts are considerable and fall broadly into the following themes: (1) documentation of biodiversity, including species and their distributions, evolutionary and population genetic relationships and affinities, and the chronology and geological context of species and community diversification, (2) conservation biology, including documentation of disease outbreak and response, invasive species, and extinction, and (3) understanding of interesting evolutionary processes, including adaptive radiation, hybridization, ecological opportunity, and the genetic basis of biological innovation.