Viverrid Newcomers

The viverrids of the subfamily Paradoxurinae are the first group of carnivorans to reach Australia since the felids and canids made their appearance 6 million years ago, and among the first of a new wave of colonists that are about to pour in from Asia over the next 10 million years. Only arriving in the last million years or so, viverrids were the only carnivorans found on Sulawesi, and spread onto the Australian mainland when it collided with their island home.

All of Australia's Viverridae are descended from the Sulawesi Palm Civet, an little-known endemic species that declined in the Holocene because of habitat destruction but made a comeback once man disappeared and its habitat regenerated. Three species occur in Australia today (including the Sulawesi peninsula) - all remain similar to their ancestor and are currently restricted to the northern rainforests, but they are beginning to show the first signs of success.

Two of Australia's civet species are still only found in Sulawesi. The Sulawesi Brown Civet (Macrogalidia glaucas) and Sulawesi Striped Civet (M. apatelas) both diverged before the island collided with Australia, and still roam the forests of their forebears. Sulawesi offers a much more familiar ecosystem for viverrids than the rest of the continent - it remains separated from New Guinea by thousands of kilometres of water, savannah and floodplains, and so its rainforests retain a largely distinct Asian ecology, excluding the odd Australian pioneer. Therefore this is a less challenging environment for the viverrids, and remains their stronghold. The brown and striped civet have practically identical food preferences and behaviour - they both sleep high in tree hollows, come out at night, spend time both in the trees and on the ground, and feed on arthropods, small vertebrates, fruit and grass. To avoid competition with each other the two species live in different parts of the forest, with the brown civet inhabiting the highlands above 1000m while the striped civet stalks through the lowlands. They rarely coexist in the same patch of forest.

The third species of Australian viverrid has left the home cradle of Sulawesi and headed out into the unknown. The Papuan Striped Civet (M. papuensis, species illustrated) is descended from a population of Sulawesi Striped Civets that, remarkably, managed to make their way across the Arafura Floodplain all the way to New Guinea - relict populations may still be found in the small patches of rainforest that are scattered across the open floodplains. It has adapted quite successfully to New Guinea's distinct rainforest ecosystem and can now be found across the region, free from the competition of other species of civet. Instead, it is faced with potential competition from cats and quolls, which it largely avoids because of their more varied, omnivorous diet, rather than being mostly carnivorous. It has been so successful that it has recently spread south from New Guinea and to the rainforests of the Atherton Tablelands, and has begun to invade wet eucalypt forest as well. Viverrids may have only been here for around a million years, but the Papuan Striped Civet proves that the family has the potential to become one of Australia's most successful groups of predatory mammals.