XVI International Botanical Congess

The ten species of tree kangaroo (Dendrolagus) are found in rain forests of Papua New Guinea and northern Australia. Many feed nocturnally and cryptically, making diet determination difficult. Faecal pellets from one PNG species and one Australian species were disaggregated in H2O2 and cuticle fragments liberated for microscopic examination. Reference cuticles were prepared from plants collected from the appropriate region. Preliminary results for the PNG species have shown that while a number of arborescent angiosperms occur in the diet, a surprisingly large proportion appears to be ferns and mosses. For the Australian species small, trees, such as Schefflera actinophylla contribute significantly to the diet, as do ferns.