Philippine Island sets record with World’s largest concentration of unique mammals

• Luzon, the largest and most populous island of the Philippines, is home to the greatest concentration of unique mammal species on Earth.
• A 15-year study concluded that there were 56 species of mammals in Luzon, with 52 of them being endemic.
• Most mammals are small, less than 200 grams, making most discoveries previously unknown.

Although Luzon is renowned as the largest and most populous island of the Philippines, it also harbors the greatest concentration of unique mammal species on Earth, with most found nowhere else in the world.

The island, home to the Philippine capital Manila, has never been connected to any continental land. Throughout the ages, this allowed the species arriving from the Asian mainland to evolve, diversify, and thrive in different habitats of its mountain ranges and peaks isolated by lowlands.

Additionally, geological research indicates that parts of it have been dry land areas continuously for some 27 million years, making it one of the oldest islands.

“It’s an ancient island. So, there’s time for rare events to take place. That’s a big part of it,” Dr. Lawrence Heaney, biologist and curator of mammals at the Field Museum in Chicago, told the news.

“There are no countries in continental Europe that have (this number of) unique species of mammals.”

Heaney is one of the first researchers to document the island’s diversity and has led American and Filipino scientists studying mammals in the Philippines since 1981.

Starting in 2000, his team conducted a 15-year study that concluded there were 56 species of mammals — not including bats — on the island, and 52 of them were endemic.

This means that Luzon’s non-flying mammals, 93 percent of them, are found nowhere else, making it a biological treasure trove.

Even the Galapagos islands are surpassed by Luzon, which is known for its diverse and unique array of wildlife.

“Luzon takes it another step further because there are isolated mountain ranges and isolated mountain peaks that are separated from all others by lowlands. They function as islands. Islands in the sky. Each one of those islands in the sky has its own unique set of species. Luzon island is made up of islands within the island,” Heaney said.

“What’s in the northern Sierra Madre, you know Cagayan province … is very different from what’s in the mountains that are in Aurora province, because there’s an area of lowlands that separates those two different mountain chains. Then the mountains, the next set of mountains down also are separated by another low-lying area … There are species of mammals that occur there that don’t live anywhere else in the world.”

Many of those mammals are tiny — the size of the house mouse. When most people think about mammal species, they usually imagine those on the larger part of the spectrum, like themselves.

“We think about water buffalo and horses and lions and tigers and bears,” Heaney said. “There are actually very few large mammals, overwhelmingly, most mammals are small, less than 200 grams … Not surprisingly, given that, most of the things we have discovered that were previously unknown are small.”

Mariano Roy Duya, associate professor at the University of the Philippines’ Institute of Biology, who has been working with Heaney, informed Arab News that 28 out of the 56 mammal species identified in Luzon were rodents.

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