MICROLEPIDOPTERA OF NEW GUINEA 
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Although the Schoenotenidae and the Tortricidae were especially 
numerous in the Moss Forest Camp, other families were also abundantly 
represented at this locality. Many other groups, and also the Macro- 
heterocera, were richer in that locality than elsewhere. It is as if some 
mysterious creative forces are at play in those high-elevated, humid, 
moss-clad woods of a comparatively uniform vegetation, only 200 meters 
below the cold plains surrounding Lake Habbema. One wonders what 
these> forces may be; apparently not the abundance of plant growth. 
Partly that of the mosses perhaps. Nothing is known of the food-plants of 
the Papuan Schoenotenes species, of which 23 have been collected in the 
Moss Forest Camp; their larvae may feed on mosses; many species of 
this genus with their roughly tufted wings and greyish or olive coloration 
closely resemble the colours of mosses and seem to be adapted to that 
special environment. However, although moss-clad forests can be found 
everywhere in the Archipelago at that altitude, such an abundance of 
Heterocera has never been reported from anywhere else. The collector, 
Dr. Toxopeus, gives a colourful narrative about tills camp in his series 
of impressions of the Expedition (1939, vol. 5, pp. 59 — 67, plates 1—2). 
He told us that he and his assistants could make only a choice out of 
hundreds of small Lepidoptera coming to light traps, and that he tried to 
capture as many different forms as possible, as he was simply unable to 
take long series of one species : so abundant were the visitors to the white 
screens behind the collecting lamps. 
Returning to our original subject we can safely state that the most 
striking feature of the fauna of the Central Region is the richness of its 
endemic elements. In this respect we readily endorse the statement 
recently made by Lieftinck in his excellent study of the fauna of Odonata 
of New Guinea (1949, p. 244): . . . “all the evidence at present available 
supports the view that the proper fauna of New Guinea is not ‘Australian’, 
nor ‘Oriental’, in the sense in which these terms have hitherto been under- 
stood, but ‘Papuan’.” 
In further support of this statement we may use the important evidence 
of the numerous rich “zoocentres” or habitats of largest specific density of 
endogenic genera, e.g., Schoenotenes with not less than 75 Papuan species 
of which 62 were collected in the Central Region, and only 12 other species 
have been recorded from outside the Papuan region; the Eucosmid 
Hermenias with 20 endemic species (apodemic species : India 3, Australia 
7); the Tortricids Isotenes (endemic species: 13, 12 of which also in the 
Central Region, apodemic: 4), Clioanograptis (endemic: 8, apodemic: 1), 
Taeniarchis (endemic: 5, apodemic: 1), etc. In the following chapter we 
shall mention several di-, tri- and quadri-endogenic genera which show a 
similar abundance of endemic species in the Papuan region. 
In fact the entire family Schoenotenidae with its six endemic genera 
may be regarded as an endogenic group ; besides these six and the extensive 
endogenic genus Schoenotenes, mentioned above, it comprises two genera 
