The herpetofauna of Faure Island, Shark Bay, Western Australia

WA Museum Records and Supplements | Updated 8 years ago

ABSTRACT – The currently recorded Faure Island herpetofauna comprises 24 species of reptile. This is a strict subset of the more diverse herpetofauna recorded from adjacent Peron Peninsula. We describe the broader geographic distributions and habitat associations of each species, and discuss the biogeography of the island herpetofauna in the context of the Carnarvon Basin biogeographic region. The reduced island diversity is presumably due to a combination of lesser sampling effort and 'drop out' extinctions following drowning of the continental shelf and severance of the island around 6500 years ago.