Animal Diversity Web

Ge­o­graphic Range

Pha­langer lul­lu­lae (Wood­lark Is­land Cus­cus) is only found on Wood­lark Is­land, which is part of the Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea, and on the neigh­bor­ing is­land of Al­ces­ter, which is 70 kilo­me­tres south of Wood­lark (Nor­ris, 1999).

• Biogeographic Regions
• australian
  • native
• oceanic islands
  • native
• pacific ocean
  • native

• Other Geographic Terms
• island endemic

Habi­tat

Pha­langer lul­lu­lae prefers pri­mary and sec­ondary low­land dry for­est. For this rea­son, it is more plen­ti­ful on the east­ern side of Wood­lark Is­land, where this is the pre­dom­i­nant type of veg­e­ta­tion, than in the dense jun­gle of the west­ern side (Flan­nery, 1995).

• Habitat Regions
• tropical

• Terrestrial Biomes
• forest

Phys­i­cal De­scrip­tion

Pha­langer lul­lu­lae has a dis­tinc­tive pelage. It is short and woolly with ir­reg­u­larly mar­bled brown, ochre, and white dor­sal areas. The ven­tral fur is white with ir­reg­u­lar dark spots. The color varies on in­di­vid­u­als along a con­tin­uum from pre­dom­i­nantly dark with some lighter spots to pre­dom­i­nantly light col­ored with a few small darker spots (Flan­nery, 1995). The species has black fa­cial skin and a pink rhi­nar­ium. Pale ear flashes are some­times pre­sent.

Pha­langer lul­lu­lae is a medium sized mar­su­pial. The fe­males are on av­er­age slightly larger than the males.

Pha­langer lul­lu­lae is highly adapted to ar­bo­real life. The tail is long and pre­hen­sile. The end of the tail is naked and used to as­sist in grip­ping. Dig­its one and two are op­pos­able against three, four, and five. The first and sec­ond dig­its of the pes are syn­dacty­lous.

The skull is pear shaped and widest at the pos­te­rior end of the zy­go­matic arch. With age the supra­or­bital ridges fuse to form a sagit­tal crest. The in­tra­or­bital trough is broad and shal­low. The lacrimal is broadly ex­posed on the face of the ros­trum (Nor­ris, 1999).

The den­tal for­mula is 3/1 1/0 2/1 4/4=32. There are also two to three uni­cus­pids of un­known ho­mol­ogy be­tween i1 and p3 (Men­zies, 1986). The mo­lars are not strongly crenu­lated. There is a well de­vel­oped para­conid on m2 (Nor­ris, 1999).

• Other Physical Features
• endothermic
• bilateral symmetry

• Range mass

  1500 to 2050 g

  52.86 to 72.25 oz

• Average mass

  1730 g

  60.97 oz

• Range length

  638 to 717 mm

  25.12 to 28.23 in

• Average length

  688 mm

  27.09 in

De­vel­op­ment

Lit­tle is known about the spe­cific de­vel­op­ment and life cycle of P. lul­lu­lae. How­ever, like many mar­su­pi­als the young are born naked and highly al­tri­cial. The young are car­ried in the mar­supium, after which they grasp onto the mother's back and ride there while they con­tinue to ma­ture (Vaughn, Ryan, and Czaplewski, 2000; Nor­ris, 1999).

Re­pro­duc­tion

Mat­ing be­hav­ior has not been ob­served in P. lul­lu­lae. The only in­for­ma­tion on re­pro­duc­tion and on­togeny comes from the cap­ture of five fe­males in Au­gust 1987. Of these fe­males, one was parous, one had no young, two had naked pouch young, and one had a well grown back young. From this it can be in­ferred that the breed­ing sea­son is an ex­tended pe­riod (Flan­nery, 1995).

• Key Reproductive Features
• gonochoric/gonochoristic/dioecious (sexes separate)
• sexual
• viviparous

Be­hav­ior

Pha­langer lul­lu­lae is a soli­tary species. Radio track­ing stud­ies showed a strong ten­dency for in­di­vid­u­als to cen­ter their ac­tiv­i­ties around a small num­ber of sleep­ing trees. The an­i­mals sleep dur­ing the day shel­tered in hol­lows within trees and emerge at night to for­age in the upper part of the for­est canopy. They are al­most com­pletely ar­bo­real. In­ter­ac­tions be­tween in­di­vid­u­als are often ag­gres­sive (Nor­ris, 1999)

• Key Behaviors
• nocturnal
• motile
• solitary

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Per­cep­tion

• Perception Channels
• tactile
• chemical

Food Habits

Local peo­ple on Wood­lark and Al­ces­ter Is­lands claim that P. lul­lu­lae feeds on two species of vine. The species of these vines have not yet been iden­ti­fied. It has been sug­gested based on in­for­ma­tion from other species of Pha­langer that they may also eat fruit and even meat when avail­able (Flan­nery, 1995).

• Primary Diet
• herbivore
  • folivore

Pre­da­tion

No anti-preda­tor adap­ta­tions have been de­scribed for Pha­langer lul­lu­lae. Pha­langer lul­lu­lae is the largest species of ter­res­trial mam­mal (with the ex­cep­tion of hu­mans) on Wood­lark Is­land, so it may have no preda­tors in the wild (Nor­ris, 1999). The an­i­mal is hunted by the peo­ple of the is­land (Flan­nery, 1995).

• Known Predators

  • humans (Homo sapiens)

Ecosys­tem Roles

Pha­langer lul­lu­lae may com­pete with the om­niv­o­rous sugar glid­ers and fru­giv­o­rous bats (Dob­so­nia pan­ni­eten­sis, Nyc­timene major, Ptero­pus con­spic­il­la­tus, Ptero­pus hy­pome­lanus- Flan­nery, 1995) which also for­age in the for­est canopy for food. It is not known to raid gar­dens, so it is not re­garded as a pest (Nor­ris, 1999).

Eco­nomic Im­por­tance for Hu­mans: Pos­i­tive

Pha­langer lul­lu­lae is hunted for meat by Wood­lark Is­land's in­dige­nous peo­ple. How­ever, the meat from P. lul­lu­lae is only a minor part of the local diet, and the an­i­mals are only hunted when the sea is too rough to fish (Flan­nery, 1994).

• Positive Impacts
• food

Con­ser­va­tion Sta­tus

Ini­tial ex­pe­di­tions which con­cen­trated on the west­ern side of Wood­lark Is­land found P. lul­lu­lae to be scarce, lead­ing to fears that the species was en­dan­gered. More re­cent ex­pe­di­tions have found it to be mod­er­ately abun­dant on the east­ern side of the is­land and on Al­ces­ter Is­land, even around human pop­u­la­tions where it is hunted. The species is still con­sid­ered vul­ner­a­ble be­cause of it's lim­ited ge­o­graphic dis­tri­b­u­tion (Nor­ris, 1999).

• IUCN Red List

  Endangered
  More information

• IUCN Red List

  Endangered
  More information

• US Federal List

  No special status

• CITES

  No special status

Con­trib­u­tors

Corie Hanna (au­thor), Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan-Ann Arbor, On­drej Pod­laha (ed­i­tor), Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan-Ann Arbor.

Ref­er­ences

Flan­nery, T. 1995. Mam­mals of the south-west Pa­cific and Moluc­can is­lands.. Chatswood, New South Wales, Aus­tralia: Reed Books.

Men­zies, J., J. Per­netta. 1986. A tax­o­nomic re­vi­sion of cus­cuses al­lied to *Pha­langer ori­en­talis* (Mar­su­pi­alia, Pha­lan­geri­dae). Jour­nal of Zo­ol­ogy (Lon­don), B1: 551-618.

Nor­ris, C. 1999. *Pha­langer lul­lu­lae*. Mam­malian Species, 620: 1-4.

Vaughan, T., J. Ryan, N. Czaplewski. 2000. Mam­mal­ogy Fourth Edi­tion. Philadel­phia, PA: Saun­ders Col­lege Pub­lish­ing.