The Philippines is made up of more than 7,000 islands, supporting an extraordinary number of species that occur nowhere else on the planet. Eighty-six new endemic bird species have been described in the Philippines in just the last decade — more than all avian endemics ever recorded in either China or India. Nevertheless, the country’s currently known 594 avian species depend on forests, grasslands and wetlands that are rapidly disappearing.
But even more species are at risk than previously thought, according to a new study published in June in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. The research team, led by biologists from the University of Utah, thoroughly assessed the Red List status of 446 resident Philippine bird species by analyzing data stored in a massive database compiled from field visits, peer-reviewed studies, ornithology books, field guides, and BirdLife International. They found that 84 species are at greater risk than indicated by their current Red List status, including 14 species that the authors say warrant globally threatened status, which range from vulnerable to endangered to critically endangered.
“Our study provides a roadmap for not only which species may warrant heightened conservation attention, but which traits a species may have that can help inform if it may likely be more at risk of extinction,” Kyle Kittelberger, a doctoral candidate from the University of Utah and lead author of the study, said in a statement. “There is a pressing need to assess what traits make some species more at risk of extinction than others and to use this understanding to help inform conservation efforts.”
Source: Mongabay
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