Insect-pests - Biology East Borneo

K.S.S. Nair and Sumardi 13
5100 km from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific
Ocean, between 5 0 N and 11 0 S latitude and 94 0 –
141 0 E longitude (Whitten et al. 1996), and the
Wallace’s line separating a small eastern part, the
conventional definition of indigenous species has little
relevance. For instance, the natural distribution of
Pinus merkusii is limited to northern Sumatra and that
of Acacia mangium and Paraserianthes falcataria to
some small areas of the eastern islands, and therefore
it is not appropriate to consider them as indigenous to
Indonesia as a whole. Designating a species as
exotic is a matter of definition. If instead of the
political boundary of the country, we accept a
narrower spatial scale like the major island groups
and their surroundings as the spatial unit to define
indigenous and exotic species, most plantation
species in Indonesia will have to be treated as exotic.
A comparison between indigenous and exotic species
is best made after a detailed consideration of pests
and diseases in plantations.