It looked more like mice he'd seen hundreds of miles away on the island of Luzon. While on Mount Kampalili, Balete and the team made a startling discovery: a dark brown mouse with small eyes and a long, tapering nose like a shrew, different from anything he'd ever seen on that island. In 20, Balete went on expeditions to Mount Kampalili on the island of Mindanao as part of a Field Museum collaboration with the Philippine Eagle Foundation, who wanted to know what mammals lived alongside one of the largest and most critically endangered birds, the Philippine Eagle. That's the case with the newly-described shrew-mouse. When scientists discover something in the field, it oftens takes years for their work to be analyzed, written up, and published. "By the time of his death at far too young an age, he was already one of the most prominent biodiversity scientists working in the Philippines."īut even after his death, Balete continues to shape what scientists know about Philippine mammals. His enjoyment of biodiversity was really infectious, making him a mentor and inspiration to a generation of researchers and conservationists," says Mariano Roy Duya, assistant professor of biology at the University of the Philippines, and coauthor of the new publication. "Danny contributed hugely to scientific knowledge about biological diversity in the Philippines.
Danny could identify every plant, every frog, every bug, everything that you encountered, it was just astounding." Balete and Heaney went on to work together for the next 25 years until Balete's sudden death in 2017. "I was establishing a research program, and asked around, 'Who would be a really good, enthusiastic young person to take into the field?' And several people immediately said, 'Danny Balete.' So I invited him to do some field work with me, and he did fantastically well," remembers Heaney. At the time, Balete had recently completed his Bachelor's degree at the University of the Philippines and was already making a name for himself with his love of nature and skill at fieldwork. Heaney has been studying the mammals of the Philippines for 40 years, and he first met Danny Balete in the late 1980s. "The taller and the bigger the mountain range, the more species of mammals will be living there that don't live anywhere else in the world," says Heaney.
As a result, they tend to stay isolated on their own "sky islands," evolving separately from each other and forming new species. Its high mountains are cooler and much wetter than surrounding lowlands, and it's difficult for small mammals to get from one mountain peak to the next. The mountainous geography of the Philippines contributes to its biodiversity.
"Naming a new genus after someone is one of the highest honors biologists can bestow." "Naming a new species after anyone is a big deal, a major honor given to people who make long-term, high-impact contributions to biodiversity science," says Dakota Rowsey, the study's first author, vertebrate collections manager at Arizona State University, and research associate at the Field Museum. "In the past several decades, we've learned just how incredibly important the Philippines are in terms of being home to mammals that are found nowhere else, and a lot of that knowledge can be traced back to fieldwork led by Danny Balete," says Larry Heaney, curator of mammals at Chicago's Field Museum and senior author of the paper describing the new mouse in the Journal of Mammalogy.
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