Conservation priorities in the Philippine Archipelago.

To determine how conservation planning should most efficiently proceed so as to protect all the Philippine Archipelago's terrestrial vertebrate species, the authors took the island having the largest total number of species (Mindanao), identified the island containing the greatest number of species not found on Mindanao, and repeated this procedure until an asymptote began to be approached. The most critical islands from the point of view of conservation prove to be Mindanao, Luzon, and Palawan. Together they contain 86% of all Philippine terrestrial vertebrate species. Single-island endemics constitute an important part (176 species, or 28%) of the terrestrial vertebrate fauna. Mindanao, Luzon and Palawan are again the key islands, containing 72% of all single-island endemics. Creation and management of parks and reserves on these 3 islands should therefore have the highest priority in the overall conservation plan for the Philippines. Smaller islands, however, also merit attention since they hold significant numbers of endemic species, these being especially vulnerable to extinction. The trends in both total species numbers and in numbers of single-island endemics are strongly convergent in the 4 classes of vertebrates, suggesting that a conservation plan optimal for, say, mammals, would also be optimal or nearly so for other taxa. -from Authors

Duke Scholars

Author John W. Terborgh Environmental Natural Science