Solomon Island Skink - Solomon Islands

The Marovo Lagoon, located in the New Georgia Islands, covers an area of over 700 square kilometers and has the distinction of being the world’s largest saltwater lagoon. A true lagoon is defined as a small and shallow body of water separated from a larger and deeper body of water by barrier islands or coral reefs.

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Corucia zebrata - The Solomon Island skink is the world’s largest skink. Adults grow to lengths of 82 centimeters and feature a tail making up almost half of the total length. Despite its large size, the Solomon Islands skink is strictly an arboreal creature, staying within the upper canopy of the forests as it feasts on fruits and vegetables. It has a particular preference for the fruit of the strangler fig tree. The Solomon Island skink is a crepuscular animal, a term describing animals active during the twilight hours.

Giant Solomon Island Treefrog - Solomon Islands

Platymantis guppyi - The giant Solomon Island treefrog is distributed over a wide area of the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. It is a small frog inhabiting the closed canopy of old growth rainforests. Most tree frogs descend to ground level for mating and spawning, but the Solomon Island treefrog is an exception; never leaving the tree as an adult, it will attach a foam nest to the tree branches. Logging has disrupted the treefrog’s environment, but it has quickly adapted to new growth forests.

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The Solomon Islands were settled over 30,000 years ago by Papua speaking people. Other migrations from Austronesian and Lapita people began arriving in the archipelago several thousand years later. The first Europeans to make contact with the native people were the Spanish, arriving in 1566. By 1893, the British had created a protectorate over the islands and aside from a brief period of Japanese occupation during World War II, it remained under British control until gaining independence in 1978.

Cities in Oceania

Honiara began as a small development in the vicinity of Henderson Field, a landing strip partially constructed by Japanese forces. The struggle for control of Henderson Field became the focal point in the Battle of Guadalcanal, a battle lasting from August 1942 until February 1943. The Allied forces prevailed and the air field was completed; it now serves as the main airport for the Solomon Islands.

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Jakarta was established as a trading center for the Sunda Kingdom, a state existing from 669 to 1579. In 1619, the city began serving as the administrative headquarters for the Dutch East Indies Company; the Dutch had renamed the city “Batavia.” Jakarta survived Dutch colonial rule, Japanese occupation, and a war of liberation to become, with over 30 million people, one of the world’s most populated metropolitan areas.

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Manila has been associated with several Asian kingdoms, but its longest foreign relationship was with Spain. The Spanish, under the leadership of Ferdinand Magellan, arrived in 1521. Although the first European encounter resulted in Magellan’s death, Spain succeeded in establishing a successful colony in the Philippines; Manila became one of the leading cities in Spain’s colonial empire.