page_title: Fauna of New Guinea
section_title: Insects
hierarchical_section_title: Fauna of New Guinea / Insects
caption_attribution_description: Ornithoptera alexandrae (Rothschild, 1907) Male Papua Popondetta, New Guinea 11 1976
context_page_description: The fauna of New Guinea comprises a large number of species of mammals, reptiles, birds, fish, invertebrates and amphibians.
  As the world's largest and highest tropical island, New Guinea occupies less than 0.5% of world's land surface, yet supports a high percentage of global biodiversity. Approximately 4,624 vertebrate species inhabit the island of New Guinea and its surrounding waters, which constitutes about 8% of the recognized world vertebrates. This ranges from an estimated 4% of the world's lizards and mammals, to about 10% of the world's fish species.
  The numbers of global and New Guinea invertebrate species are poorly known, and thus an accurate comparison is difficult. Butterflies are the best known invertebrate group, and are represented in New Guinea by about 735 species, which is about 4.2% of the world total of 17,500 species.
context_section_description: The New Guinea insect fauna demonstrates many principles of vicariance biogeography and New Guinea has played a strategic role in the spread of insects in various directions. It has functioned as an area of evolution of higher taxa, and of their spread, as well as being a zone of faunal mixture of two distinct zoogeographical regions the Indomalayan realm and the Australasian realm. New Guinea has a distinct insect fauna which apparently evolved in long isolation. Over the Tertiary it consisted of a land mass (often called the Melanesian continent) more isolated than the present New Guinea, and farther to the northeast. This may have divided into a Solomons and a New Guinea part. Part of New Britain, Manus Island, and the Cyclops Mountains of northcentral New Guinea are postulated as the only remaining parts of the original New Guinea portion. Southern New Ireland was apparently part of the Solomons mass. In the Pliocene New Guinea rose from the sea bottom, and in the Pleistocene connected with Australia for a sufficient period to permit faunal exchange. The oceanic Pacific Islands received insects from New Guinea The number of higher taxa falls with greater distance from New Guinea, with the age of island groups In some. The insect faunas of New Guinea and New Zealand interchanged through New Caledonia not Australia.
  There is no comprehensive overview on the insect fauna of New Guinea but a bibliography is available  There may be 300,000 - 100,000 species and Papua New Guinea ranks 12th in the world in terms of endemism of large butterflies. The Papua Insects Foundation provides an expert resource
  Notable endemic insect species include Ornithoptera paradisea, Ornithoptera chimaera, Papilio weymeri, Graphium weiskei, Ideopsis hewitsonii, Taenaris catops, Parantica rotundata, Parantica clinias, Rosenbergia rufolineata, Mecopus doryphorus, Mecopus serrirostris, Sphingnotus mirabilis, Sphingnotus insignis, Belionota aenea, Poropterus solidus, Poropterus gemmifer, Aesernia splendens, Aporhina bispinosa, Eupholus petitii, Eupholus bennetti, Schizoeupsalis promissa, Barystethus tropicus, Eupholus geoffroyi, Rhinoscapha loriai, Rhinoscapha funebris, Rhinoscapha insignis Alcides exornatus, Alcides elegans, Xenocerus lacrymans, Arachnobas sectator, Arrhenodes digramma, Eupholus magnificus, Mecopus bispinosus, Callictita spp.. Also known from New Guinea are Batocera wallacei, Ithystenus curvidens, Meganthribus pupa, Sipalinus gigas, Pelargoderus rubropunctatus, Rhynchophorus bilineatus, Gasterocercus anatinus, Acalolepta australis, Actinus imperialis, Megacrania batesii.
caption: Ornithoptera alexandrae
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