Frank E. Rheindt, a researcher in the biological sciences department at the National University of Singapore, traveled to the Wallacea Islands on his own to go birding. During that 2009 expedition, the scientist discovered new birds that he did not know about. Four years later, he went with his team to collect all the information and DNA samples in just six weeks. The results published this Thursday in the magazine Science They show that, in the Wallacea Islands of Indonesia (Taliabu, Pegen and Togian), ten unique and hitherto unknown species fly over mountains of up to 1,400 meters that explorers of other centuries never reached.
I’m going to be pessimistic, but I don’t think the species we describe here will survive more than two decades.
Currently, around 11,000 species of birds are known, according to data from the study. Rheindt claims that there is more knowledge about birds than about mammals. “But the most curious thing about this work is that we have discovered a large number of birds [cinco especies y cinco subespecies] in a relatively small place that had never been seen before”, he details. Two of the islands do not exceed 3,000 square kilometers and the third, no more than 250. Scientists have been able to confirm that they were different families due to genetics and the difference in song.
The number of islands in Indonesia is estimated at 17,508 and most, explains the expert, are surrounded by a sea between 20 and 50 meters deep. However, the water that borders the three study plots reaches 120 meters, which implies that they are not connected to the rest. 15,000 years ago, most of the Indonesian islands were close together, species mixing and reproducing with each other. “However, in this new case, the islands have always been separate and the species we have discovered there are totally unique. The isolation conditions of the environment have accentuated endemism”, develops the specialist. Scientists do not know the date on which these special birds colonized space since they do not even have recorded information about the exact age of the islands. “We only know that they are relatively young, about two million years old, so we assume that the birds arrived more than a million years ago, but we are still working on it,” argues Rheindt.
On the other hand, what the researcher can confirm is that the history of these three islands remains incomplete. Collectors of previous centuries did not delve into the entrails and altitudes of the region. Taliabu Island has reliefs of up to 1,400 meters, but the scientists, throughout eight historical expeditions, stayed in the coastal areas. Along the same lines, Peleng, which reaches 1,000 meters in altitude, welcomed three collectors who had never ventured into the heart of the island. Lastly, only two bird watchers and collectors visited the smallest one, which does not have reliefs of more than 350 meters.
The study assumes that it is because of all these elements that nine of the 10 described species come from the heights of more than 800 meters of the islands that have never been reached before. “We have discovered a mountain avifauna that has an unusual number of birds that remained completely unknown to history,” says the article in Science.
The disappearance of the forest mass
“I’m going to be pessimistic, but I don’t think the species we describe here will survive more than two decades,” says Rheindt. The 10 new families of birds discovered live under two dangers that alarm scientists. First, deforestation. Since the 2000s, according to the researcher, Asian companies have blocked the Taliabu forest and are already reaching the mountains. Birds that live in high altitudes are forced to migrate upwards, but the top is not infinite.
The second threat is climate change. “And the problem there is that we can’t intervene quickly,” he adds, “our planet is in a whole new stage. Just look at what’s happening in Australia. Everything burns, millions of animals die and these events will not stop growing. The expert recalls that Taliabu Island suffered, about 20 years ago, the fiercest fires ever seen until today. The forest couldn’t take it and was never the same again.
However, the ornithologist does not believe that we are going “towards a world without birds”, because they will survive all this more than us. “They are very resistant”, thinks the researcher, “but I do think that our children will live in a land with a very poor biodiversity, probably with a hundred species of birds less than now”, he concludes.
For Toni Gabaldón, a researcher at the Barcelona Biomedical Research Institute (IRB), this study is very important as it optimizes resources to find new species using the history and experience of naturalists. “Although it seems that we know everything, this research shows that we still have a lot to discover. Knowing species and their habitat is crucial to maintain and protect them,” he comments. The biologist adds that as they are endemic species, their population is reduced, and therefore much more vulnerable. “Any impact could wipe them out in one fell swoop,” he says.
follow in the footsteps of history
The clues that Rheindt’s team followed were those of Alfred Russel Wallace. The 19th-century expert, later supported by more than 100 contemporary explorers until the world wars, offered a comprehensive overview of Wallacea’s collection of birds from the region. “Studying the routes and operations of these historic collectors and identifying the obstacles they encountered has been a very fruitful approach to pinpoint our viewing areas,” the study says.
The last ornithologists to be on Taliabu’s highest mountain were, scientists on this expedition believe, PJ Davidson and his partner. In 1991 they reached 800 meters where they observed four of the species described in this study, but they did not obtain biological material. Peleng also remained unexplored by modern ornithology. “Before our first observation, to our knowledge, there were only the occasional excursions of Mochamad Indrawan and his colleagues in the 1990s and early 2000s,” admits the study’s lead author.