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This paper is a somewhat revised and updated version of a report, written in 1973 after our 9-day visit, at the request of Mr. Marlon Brando, proprietor of Tetiaroa Atoll, and published here with his accord. The original version was based on that visit to the atoll, as explained in the introduction. It was supplemented by a few observations called from herbarium specimens and field notes of Dr. Gerrit Wilder, who visited the island briefly on March 12, 1925 and August 30, 1929, and of E. H. Quayle, of the Whitney Expedition, who stopped there on November 19-21, 1921.

The Man and the Biosphere (MAB) programme of UNESCO, first thought of in 1968, launched in 1970 and endorsed by the Stockholm Conference of 1972, includes a number of scientific projects, of which No. 7 is devoted to the Ecology and Rational Utilization of Island Ecosystems. All the programmes are to be interdisciplinary and intergovernmental. Among member countries which developed their own national plans within the framework of the separate MAB projects, France drafted a vigorous one in MAB 7 in French Polynesia, under the leadership of Dr. B. Salvat (1977). The French programme includes a detailed study of an atoll, Takapoto in the Tuamotus, and comparison of its ecosystems and their functioning with those of a high island already under scrutiny, Moorea in the Society Islands.