| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
TAKAKU Gen Hokkaido University of Education, Sapporo, Department of Teaching Training, Associate Professor (40236203)
IWASA Mitsuhiro Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, Department of Environmental Hygiene, Professor (00168551)
KON Masahiro The University of Shiga Prefeture, School of Environmental Science, Professor (00211912)
KOBAYSHI Norio Hokkaido University, The Hokkaido University Museum, Researcher (00400036)
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| Research Abstract |
Indonesia is attractive to the students of evolution for a number of reasons. It occupies a central part of Asian tropics, which is known to harbor the world's richest and most diverse fauna and flora. Furthermore, it consists of many islands that differ in their size and distance from other islands. The impact of human activity is also very important factor for the process of dispersal and vicariance on evolution in the last several thousands of years. Relations between the human activity in prehistoric life and the distributions of organisms are, however, still unclear.
Arthropodal community living in mammal excrements, especially cow dung, is consisted by various diverse taxa; several kinds of beetles, of flies, also several mites nematode, and so on. The community is also showed very diverse biogeographical variations, therefore, many scientists have been engaged taxonomic and ecological works on organisms in excrements. Indonesian wild cow, Banten Bos javanicus, is a restricted distributed animal in where only Java, Bali and Karimantan Islands. The Banten is modified domestic animals, which are distributed wholly Indonesian countries and Islands.
This project aims to elucidate pattern and process of biogeography of terrestrial arthropods in Asian tropics, with particular emphasis on insects and mites in mammal excretory substance and carcass. Our methods include (1) field collection of specimens, (2) gathering in-depth biological information of target taxa, and (3) rearing of insect in the laboratory.
As a result of this project, we show some of the patterns and process of distribution in tropical organisms, but they are still largely unknown. We published 45 papers, and described, 27 species and 1 subspecies as new to science. We hope our result will greatly contribute to enrich knowledge of this important field of evolutionary biology, especially in the last several thousands of years.
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