The Banda Sea Islands moist deciduous forests is a tropical moist forest

ecoregion An ecoregion (ecological region) is an ecological and geographic area that exists on multiple different levels, defined by type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. Ecoregions cover relatively large areas of land or water, and c ...

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...

. The ecoregion includes several island groups in the southwestern

Banda Sea The Banda Sea (, , ) is one of four seas that surround the Maluku Islands of Indonesia, connected to the Pacific Ocean, but surrounded by hundreds of islands, including Timor, as well as the Halmahera Sea, Halmahera and Ceram Seas. It is about ...

, including the

Tanimbar Islands The Tanimbar Islands (; ), also called ''Timur Laut'' (literally, "North East"; ), are a group of about 65 islands in the Maluku province of Indonesia. The largest and most central of the islands is Yamdena; others include Selaru to the sout ...

Kai Islands The Kai Islands (also Kei Islands) of Indonesia are a group of islands in the southeastern part of the Maluku Islands, located in the province of Maluku (province), Maluku. The Moluccas have been known as the Spice Islands due to regionally sp ...

, and the

Barat Daya Islands The Barat Daya Islands (; ) are a group of islands in the Maluku province of Indonesia. The Indonesian phrase ''barat daya'' means 'south-west'. Geography These islands are located off the eastern end of East Timor. Wetar is the largest island i ...

except for

Wetar Wetar is a tropical island which belongs to the Indonesian province of Maluku and is the largest island of the Maluku Barat Daya Islands (literally ''Southwest Islands'') Regency of the Maluku Islands. It lies east of the Lesser Sunda Islands, ...

Geography

The islands in the ecoregion are part of

Wallacea Wallacea is a biogeography, biogeographical designation for a group of mainly list of islands of Indonesia, Indonesian islands separated by deep-water straits from the Asian and Australia (continent), Australian continental shelf, continental ...

, a group of indonesian islands which lie between the Australian and Asian continents but were never part of either continent.Wikramanayake, Eric; Eric Dinerstein; Colby J. Loucks; et al. (2002). ''Terrestrial Ecoregions of the Indo-Pacific: a Conservation Assessment.'' Washington, DC: Island Press. The islands consist of two concentric island arcs. The Inner Banda Arc is made up of young, active volcanic islands, including the

Banda Islands The Banda Islands () are a volcanic group of ten small volcanic islands in the Banda Sea, about south of Seram Island and about east of Java (island), Java, and constitute an administrative district (''kecamatan'') within the Central Maluku ...

, Serua Island, Nila Island, Teun Island,

Damar Island Damer, or Damar, (), also called Kenli Island, is a small volcano, volcanic island in the Barat Daya Islands group in Indonesia's Maluku (Indonesian province), Maluku province, on the southern side of the Banda Sea. It is flanked by four smaller ...

, and Romang Island. The Outer Banda Arc is made up of oceanic sediments, principally coralline limestone, together with some older metamorphic rocks which accreted as the

Australian plate The Australian plate is or was a major tectonic plate in the eastern and, largely, southern hemispheres. Originally a part of the ancient continent of Gondwana, Australia remained connected to India and Antarctica until approximately when Indi ...

subducts Subduction is a geological process in which the oceanic lithosphere and some continental lithosphere is recycled into the Earth's mantle at the convergent boundaries between tectonic plates. Where one tectonic plate converges with a second pla ...

under the

Banda Sea plate The Banda Sea plate is a minor tectonic plate underlying the Banda Sea in southeast Asia. This plate also carries a portion of Sulawesi Island, the entire Seram Island, and the Banda Islands. Clockwise from the east it is bounded by the Bird's ...

. The Outer Banda Arc includes the

Babar Islands The Babar Islands (; ) are located in Maluku Province, Indonesia between latitudes 7 degrees 31 minutes South to 8 degrees 13 minutes South and from longitudes 129 degrees 30 minutes East to 130 degrees 05 minutes East. The group now constitutes ...

, and

Leti Islands The Letti Islands () of Indonesia are part of the Maluku Islands, in southwest Maluku Province. (The spelling Leti Islands is also used sometimes.) They are also called the "Lemola" Archipelago, from the initial two letters of each of the three main ...

Yamdena Yamdena (spelled Jamdena during the Dutch colonial period) is the largest of the Tanimbar Islands in the Maluku province of Indonesia. Saumlaki is the chief town, located on the south end of the island. The island has a range of forested hill ...

in the Tanimbar Islands is the largest island in the ecoregion. Yamdena is mostly low, with a maximum elevation of 120 meters. Yamdena and several other Outer Arc islands have areas of

karst Karst () is a topography formed from the dissolution of soluble carbonate rocks such as limestone and Dolomite (rock), dolomite. It is characterized by features like poljes above and drainage systems with sinkholes and caves underground. Ther ...

where the island's limestone was uplifted and then eroded.

Climate

The ecoregion has a tropical monsoon climate, with two seasons. The west monsoon season runs from mid-December to June, and brings humidity and higher rainfall. The east monsoon season brings drier weather. On Yamdena, the largest island in the Tanimbar Islands and in the ecoregion, the highest rainfall month is February (380 mm), and the driest month is September (100 mm). The islands receive more rainfall than

Timor Timor (, , ) is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, in the north of the Timor Sea. The island is Indonesia–Timor-Leste border, divided between the sovereign states of Timor-Leste in the eastern part and Indonesia in the ...

, and the other islands of

Nusa Tenggara The Lesser Sunda Islands (, , ), now known as Nusa Tenggara Islands (, or "Southeast Islands"), are an archipelago in the Indonesian archipelago. Most of the Lesser Sunda Islands are located within the Wallacea region, except for the Bali pr ...

to the west.

Flora

The principal plant communities are evergreen rain forest, semi-evergreen rain forest, moist deciduous forest, and dry deciduous forest. Common trees in the Tanimbar and Kai forests include '' Dillenia papuana, Pometia pinnata, Manilkara kanosiensis, Inocarpus fagifer,

Heritiera littoralis ''Heritiera littoralis'', commonly known as the looking-glass mangrove or tulip mangrove, is a mangrove tree in the family Malvaceae native to coastal areas of eastern Africa, Asia, Melanesia and northern Australia. The common name refers to the ...

Diospyros ''Diospyros'' is a genus of over 700 species of deciduous and evergreen trees and shrubs. The majority are native to the tropics, with only a few species extending into temperate regions. Individual species valued for their hard, heavy, dark timb ...

'' spp., '' Garcinia celebica'', and '' Myristica lancifolia''.

Fauna

The ecoregion has 22 species of mammals. The

dusky pademelon The dusky pademelon or dusky wallaby (''Thylogale brunii'') is a species of marsupial in the family Macropodidae. It is found in the Aru and Kai islands and the Trans-Fly savanna and grasslands ecoregion of New Guinea. Its natural habitats are ...

(''Thylogale bruinii'') is a

kangaroo Kangaroos are marsupials from the family Macropodidae (macropods, meaning "large foot"). In common use, the term is used to describe the largest species from this family, the red kangaroo, as well as the antilopine kangaroo, eastern gre ...

native to the Kai Islands, as well as the Aru Islands and southern

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; , fossilized , also known as Papua or historically ) is the List of islands by area, world's second-largest island, with an area of . Located in Melanesia in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is ...

. The Kei myotis (''Myotis stalkeri'') is an

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ...

bat. The Indonesian tomb bat (''Taphozous achates'') is native to the ecoregion and neighboring Timor. The islands are home to several species of mosaic-tailed rats (''

Melomys ''Melomys'' is a genus of rodents in the family Muridae. Members of this genus live in the wet habitats of northern Australia (Far North Queensland), New Guinea, Torres Strait Islands and islands of the Indonesian archipelago. Species The gen ...

''). In the Tanimbar islands, '' Melomys cooperae'' is endemic to Yamdena, and the

Riama mosaic-tailed rat ''Riama'' is a genus of lizards in the Family (biology), family Gymnophthalmidae. The genus is Endemism, endemic to South America. Species The genus ''Riama'' contains 16 species which are recognized as being valid. www.reptile-database.org. *'' ...

(''Melomys howi'') is endemic to the island of Selaru in the Tanimbar Islands. Bannister's rat (''Melomys bannisteri'') is endemic to the Kai Islands, and closely related to ''M. lutillus'' of New Guinea. The other rodents of the Kai islands are '' Hydromys chrysogaster'' and '' Uromys caudimaculatus'', which are also found in New Guinea and Australia. The ecoregion is home to 225 bird species, including 21 endemic species and subspecies. It corresponds to the Banda Sea Islands endemic bird area.BirdLife International (2020) "Endemic Bird Areas factsheet: Banda Sea Islands." Downloaded from http://www.birdlife.org on 20/05/2020. Endemic birds include the Tanimbar megapode (''Megapodius tenimberensis'',

Megapodiidae The megapodes, also known as incubator birds or mound-builders, are stocky, medium-large, chicken-like birds with small heads and large feet in the family Megapodiidae. Their name literally means "large foot" and is a reference to the heavy leg ...

), Tanimbar cockatoo (''Cacatua goffiniana'',

Cacatuidae A cockatoo is any of the 21 species of parrots belonging to the family Cacatuidae, the only family in the superfamily Cacatuoidea. Along with the Psittacoidea ( true parrots) and the Strigopoidea (large New Zealand parrots), they make up t ...

), blue-streaked lory (''Eos reticulata'',

Psittaculidae Psittaculidae is a family of parrots, commonly known as Old World parrots, though this term is a misnomer, as not all its members occur in the Old World and Psittacinae also occurs in the Old World. It consists of six subfamilies: Psittricha ...

), green-cheeked bronze cuckoo (''Chrysococcyx minutillus rufomerus'',

Cuculidae Cuckoos are birds in the Cuculidae ( ) family, the sole taxon in the order Cuculiformes ( ). The cuckoo family includes the common or European cuckoo, roadrunners, koels, malkohas, couas, coucals, and anis. The coucals and anis are someti ...

), Kai coucal (''Centropus spilopterus'', Cuculidae), Banda myzomela (''Myzomela boiei'',

Meliphagidae The honeyeaters are a large and diverse family (biology), family, Meliphagidae, of small to medium-sized birds. The family includes the Epthianura, Australian chats, myzomelas, friarbirds, wattlebirds, Manorina, miners and melidectes. They are m ...

), golden-bellied flyrobin, (''Microeca hemixantha'',

Petroicidae The bird family Petroicidae includes 51 species in 19 genera. All are endemic to Australasia: New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand and numerous Pacific Islands as far east as Samoa. For want of an accurate common name, the family is often called th ...

), Wallacean whistler (''Pachycephala arctitorquis'',

Pachycephalidae The Pachycephalidae are a family of bird species that includes the whistlers, shrikethrushes, and three of the pitohuis, and is part of the ancient Australo-Papuan radiation of songbirds. The family includes 69 species that are separated into fi ...

), cinnamon-tailed fantail (''Rhipidura fuscorufa'',

Rhipiduridae The family Rhipiduridae are small insectivorous birds of Australasia, Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent that includes the fantails and silktails. Taxonomy and systematics The family contains 55 species which are divided into four genera ...

), long-tailed fantail (''Rhipidura opistherythra'', Rhipiduridae), black-bibbed monarch (''Symposiachrus mundus'',

Monarchidae The monarchs or monarch flycatchers (family Monarchidae) comprise a family of over 100 passerine birds which includes shrikebills, paradise flycatchers, and Grallina, magpie-larks. Monarchids are small insectivore, insectivorous songbirds with l ...

), Kai monarch (''Symposiachrus leucurus'', Monarchidae), Kai cuckoo-shrike (''Edolisoma dispar'', Campephagidae), slaty-backed thrush (''Geokichla schistacea'',

Turdidae The thrushes are a passerine bird family, Turdidae, with a worldwide distribution. The family was once much larger before biologists reclassified the former subfamily Saxicolinae, which includes the chats and European robins, as Old World flyca ...

), fawn-breasted thrush (''Zoothera machiki'', Turdidae),

Tanimbar starling The Tanimbar starling (''Aplonis crassa'') is a species of starling in the family Sturnidae. It is endemic to Indonesia. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests and subtropical or tropical mangrove forests. It is ...

(''Aplonis crassa'', Sturnidae), Damar flycatcher (''Ficedula henrici'',

Muscicapidae The Old World flycatchers are a large family, the Muscicapidae, of small passerine birds restricted to the Old World (Europe, Africa and Asia), with the exception of several vagrants and two species, bluethroat (''Luscinia svecica'') and north ...

), Great Kai white-eye (''Zosterops grayi'',

Zosteropidae The white-eyes are a family, Zosteropidae, of small passerine birds native to tropical, subtropical and temperate Sub-Saharan Africa, southern and eastern Asia, and Australasia. White-eyes inhabit most tropical islands in the Indian Ocean, the ...

), Little Kai white-eye (''Zosterops uropygialis'', Zosteropidae), and Tanimbar bush-warbler (''Horornis carolinae'', Cettiidae).

Protected areas

A 2017 assessment found that , 14% of the ecoregion, is in protected areas. Protected areas include Kai Besar Nature Reserve.

References

External links

*
Banda Sea Islands endemic bird area (Birdlife International)
{{Wikimedia Commons, Banda Sea Islands Moist Deciduous Forests Ecoregion, Banda Sea Islands moist deciduous forests Australasian ecoregions Ecoregions of Indonesia Ecoregions of Malesia Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests Wallacea Endemic Bird Areas