endemism

Te Paki Ecological District (TPED) in northern Northland, New Zealand, is well known as an ecologically significant centre of endemism. However, due to extensive anthropogenic habitat degradation, native forest has been reduced to small, isolated remnants and many of its endemic species are threatened with extinction. Epigeal spider communities (species living on or near the ground) were surveyed within TPED by pitfall trapping at seven native forest remnants differing in plant composition and apparent seral stage to investigate how spider communities varied within them.

New Zealand’s native forest bird species with high taxonomic levels of endemism (deep endemics) are more vulnerable to decline than species that arrived and speciated more recently. Here we use national-scale local occupancy data to show that three endemism-linked life-history traits account for greater vulnerability of deep-endemic species in the extant forest avifauna, but also that other, more subtle traits and mechanisms favour rather than hinder endemic persistence.