- Researchers, along with Indigenous Awajún community members have described 27 new-to-science species including a squirrel representing an entirely new genus, a semiaquatic mouse with webbed toes, a spiny mouse, short-tailed fruit bat, three new amphibians, eight new fish, a land-walking swamp eel, 10 new butterflies, and two new dung beetles.
- The 38-day expedition in Peru’s Alto Mayo region used traditional survey methods and modern technology to document more than 2,000 species in an area home to many people.
- The partnership highlighted how Indigenous knowledge complemented scientific research, with Awajún community members helping locate rare species while learning scientific methods, though many “discoveries” were species their people had known about for generations.
- The Alto Mayo region faces significant deforestation pressure from farming expansion, prompting Conservation International to pursue various protection strategies including ecological restoration zones and sustainable enterprises like agroforestry.
Scientists and Indigenous community members documented 27 new-to-science species in Peru’s Alto Mayo region, including four new mammals and a bizarre “blob-headed” fish that was already well-known to local people. The findings came from a 38-day expedition conducted in 2022 by Conservation International in collaboration with local Awajún Indigenous communities.
“Discovering four new mammals in any expedition is surprising — finding them in a region with significant human populations is extraordinary,” said Trond Larsen, who leads Conservation International’s Rapid Assessment Program (RAP) in the Moore Center for Science. RAPs are intensive biological surveys designed to quickly document biodiversity in understudied areas.
The team surveyed eight different zones across the 780,700-hectare (1.93-million-acre) landscape, which lies at the intersection of the Andes Mountains and Amazon Rainforest in northern Peru’s San Martín region. The region is home to more than 200,000 people, including 16 Awajún communities.
“People tend to work more in the protected areas, but we thought, hey, we have this big landscape with all different types of land uses with diverse ecosystem types, and it lies right in the middle between two existing protected areas,” said Larsen, who led the Alto Mayo expedition, told Mongabay. “But nothing’s being done, so this is a real conservation opportunity.”
During the survey, the team documented more than 2,000 species using traditional survey methods complemented by camera traps, bioacoustics sensors, and environmental DNA (eDNA) collected from water samples. Of these, 34 species appear to live only in the Alto Mayo landscape or the San Martín region.
The new species include a squirrel representing an entirely new genus, a semiaquatic mouse (Daptomys sp.) with webbed toes, a spiny mouse (Scolomys sp.), and a short-tailed fruit bat.
The team also documented three new amphibians and eight new fish, including the unusual blob-headed armored catfish (Chaetostoma sp.), a bristlenose catfish (Ancistrus sp.), a colorful tetra (Knodus sp.), a land-walking swamp eel (Synbranchus sp.), 10 new butterflies, and two new dung beetles.
“The blob-headed fish, which is so bizarre and unusual, and scientists have never seen anything like it, but it’s very familiar to the Awajún — they … regularly catch and eat them,” Larsen told Mongabay. “They know where to find these things that the scientists have never seen before.”
Yulisa Tiwi, an Awajún community member who participated in the expedition, noted that many of the “discoveries” were species her people have known about and used for generations. For example, a “new” salamander is known to them as an indicator of fertile soil, which is good for growing native potatoes.
“We were very surprised by the surprise of the scientists,” Tiwi told Mongabay.
Tiwi said local knowledge was also essential for navigating the vast forest landscape. The team sometimes had to walk for six hours carrying supplies to reach certain sites. “Our ancestral knowledge was really important, especially for helping to guide the scientists to some of the places where we were most likely to find more species and unique species … We know the traditional routes and how to access these areas,” she said.
The exchange of knowledge went both ways. “It felt like a family learning from each other,” Tiwi said. While she learned scientific methods for studying wildlife, her traditional knowledge helped the scientists locate rare species. This mutual exchange had an unexpected benefit, she said: Seeing scientists value their traditional knowledge made younger Awajún appreciate their cultural heritage more deeply.
For the Awajún, protecting biodiversity is deeply connected to their cultural survival. “The forest is not just our market. It’s a part of who we are,” Tiwi said. “The forest is where we heal ourselves, where we eat.”
But the forest is fading. The Alto Mayo landscape has faced intense deforestation pressure since the 1980s, primarily driven by the expansion of farming. Conservation International has worked in the region for 15 years, and in that time the area has seen widespread conversion to coffee plantations and rice paddies, according to Diego Dourojeanni, director of Conservation International’s Alto Mayo project. Over the past 25 years, Awajún communities have begun renting their lands to migrant farmers as a source of income.
“Starting in the year 2000, more or less, migrant farmers started to try to do agriculture in the Awajún communities,” Dourojeanni said. “The solution that the Awajún came up with is to rent their land as a way to start to gain some monetary income and maybe avoid what otherwise might have been just an invasion of their land.”
Commercial agriculture has brought with it agrochemicals and fertilizers, Dourojeanni said. “This brings contamination, pollution of water sources and the rivers and everything.”
According to Dourojeanni, Conservation International is helping establish “ecological restoration and recuperation zones” (ZOCREs in Spanish) that can be given in concession to local associations for conservation. It’s particularly focused on protecting forests along the Mayo River that connect to remaining forest patches in Indigenous territories.
The organization also supports sustainable enterprises such as agroforestry systems that combine coffee or cacao with native trees, providing both income and partial habitat restoration. It’s also exploring unique opportunities like cultivating native Amazon vanilla, which can provide significant income from small areas of land.
“We cannot do it for everyone, but we do in several communities, as many as we can, mostly the ones who are most interested,” Dourojeanni said. “We support them, provide tree seedlings for coffee and for agroforestry system, for vanilla, and technical assistance.”
According to Tiwi, Conservation International’s approach has helped the Awajún adapt to modern challenges while respecting their traditional way of life. “We are not farmers, we are hunters, gatherers … but they help us adapt,” she said. She added the organization’s support for cacao farming has provided significant income.
Beyond agriculture, Tiwi noted that Conservation International maintains a consistent presence through workshops and training, particularly benefiting women who are “beginning to learn about human rights.”
Researchers are now using the expedition’s findings to help design a conservation corridor connecting two protected areas: Alto Mayo Protected Forest and Cordillera Escalera Regional Conservation Area. The landscape’s complex mosaic of soil types, elevations and microclimates make it a place with a lot of biodiversity.
On the expedition, the team observed populations of several threatened species, including the Peruvian yellow-tailed woolly monkey (Lagothrix flavicauda), San Martin titi monkey (Plecturocebus oenanthe), and birds such as the speckle-chested piculet (Picumnus steindachneri) and long-whiskered owlet (Xenoglaux loweryi). They also recorded two previously unknown populations of Atelopus seminiferus harlequin frogs.
Many species were found in small habitat fragments surrounded by agriculture, highlighting the urgent need for conservation action. “We cannot find the medicinal plants we used to before,” Tiwi said. “Many people could not find healing plants during the pandemic … they don’t realize what they have already, until they lose it.”
This expedition highlights the wealth of biodiversity present even within a populated area, and how little we know about life on Earth. Scientists estimate only a small fraction of Earth’s species have been documented, perhaps 20% at best.
“You can’t just assume that we know most of what lives on the Earth,” Larsen said. “There’s so many hidden species and things that we simply don’t know about, and many species that we may never learn about before they disappear.”
Banner image: This ‘blob-headed’ fish (Chaetostoma sp.), is also new to science even though this species is already familiar to the Indigenous Awajun people who worked with the RAP scientists. The function of this unusual “blob” structure remains a mystery. It is a type of bristlemouth armored catfish. Photo by Robinson Olivera courtesy of Conservation International
Liz Kimbrough is a staff writer for Mongabay and holds a Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from Tulane University, where she studied the microbiomes of trees. View more of her reporting here.
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