Kofiau is an island in the

Raja Ampat Islands Raja Ampat, or the ''Four Kings'', is an archipelago located off the northwest tip of Bird's Head Peninsula on the island of New Guinea, in Indonesia's Southwest Papua , Southwest Papua province. It comprises over 1,500 small islands, cays, and sh ...

, in

Southwest Papua Southwest Papua ( id, Papua Barat Daya) is a province of Indonesia, and is a fraction of Western New Guinea. Despite being named southwest, it is a misnomer and this province is actually located in the northwest edge of Papua. The area that belo ...

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

. The island is primarily raised coral limestone with some volcanic hills, covered in low forest. The island is home to the

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found else ...

Kofiau paradise kingfisher The Kofiau paradise kingfisher (''Tanysiptera ellioti'') is a tree kingfisher belonging to the family Alcedinidae, subfamily Halcyoninae. Taxonomy This little-known bird is sometimes considered a subspecies of the common paradise kingfisher ('' ...

and Kofiau monarch. A new form of the

Green tree python The green tree python (''Morelia viridis'') is a species of snake in the family Pythonidae. The species is native to New Guinea, some islands in Indonesia, and the Cape York Peninsula in Australia. First described by Hermann Schlegel in 1872, it ...

has been found on Kofiau and Boo Island that retains its

neotenic Neoteny (), also called juvenilization,Montagu, A. (1989). Growing Young. Bergin & Garvey: CT. is the delaying or slowing of the physiological, or somatic, development of an organism, typically an animal. Neoteny is found in modern humans compa ...

yellow coloration into adulthood.

References

Raja Ampat Islands {{SwPapua-geo-stub