On Sept. 15 of this year I received a copy of the book The Mammals of Luzon Island by Laurence R. Heaney, Danilo S. Balete, and Eric A. Ricart from Dr. Perry Ong, while we were attending the 3rd Palawan Research Symposium in Puerto Princesa.
This hard-cover book was published and copyrighted in 2016 by the Johns Hopkins University Press in Baltimore, Maryland. It consists of 287 pages + title, contents, preface, and acknowledgments. The book is highly-illustrated with color pictures, maps, black and white line drawings, and graphs. An attractive color painting showing the Luzon mammal species groups in their forest microhabitats greets the reader in the title page. This painting is a work of art.
The major contents of the book consist of 11 chapters, and are organized into two parts, the Biogeography of Diversity and the Natural History of Luzon Mammals. The rest of the book is made up of the Glossary, Literature Cited, and Index.
Both Part I and Part II are of interest to students of Biology, but Part I is the more important because it deals with the integration of field studies and other fields of knowledge such as climate, geology, evolutionary trends, genetics, speciation, faunal equilibrium, ecology, and conservation.
This is probably the first book that deals with the synthesis of various existing knowledge in relation to a faunal group (mammals) in the tropics, and in some instances, offers useful critique, as in the case of the theory of faunal equilibrium of MacArthur and Wilson, which is now modified as a result of his research program.
Part II deals with the interesting natural history of the unique mammals of Luzon.
The book is so important that students of Biology, particularly those studying natural history, should read it. Libraries in universities should have a copy of this book for their students, as the authors state in the Preface that “The best available evidence at hand indicates that Luzon has the greatest concentration of unique mammals of any place in the world.”
But my major task at this time is to laud the effort of Laurence R. Heaney and his team of researchers, and to congratulate them for their excellent accomplishment in producing this volume, which, I assume, is the first book of the several that are expected to come out of their research program.
Laurence Heaney started his research work on Philippine mammals in 1981, which took place for more than four decades, and continues until the present time.
For his painstaking effort in the study of Philippine mammals, he deserves an award from academic institutions, or the Philippine government, for his vision of making known to the world how interesting and unique is the mammalian diversity of the Philippines.
Laurence Heaney is one American scientist who worked with and supported Filipinos in his research program. His research team was composed partly of Filipinos who later became scientists or experts specializing in the field of mammalogy, and one of them became his co-author of this book.
When he came to Silliman in the early 1980s, several young students became inspired to conduct studies on mammals — Louella Dolar, Myrissa V. Lepiten, Ruth Utzurrum, Moonyeen N.R. Alava, and P. Alviola, among several others, who helped him in field work and published their own papers on mammals.
My contribution to his research program was to facilitate his field work, and once joined his research team at Mt. Isarog in Bicol where Walter Brown and I found a new species of platymantid frog.
Silliman University is indeed fortunate and privileged to be a collaborating research institution of Laurence Heaney. We thank him for his contributions to knowledge on Philippine mammals, and for enriching the social life of his Filipino collaborators, as well as some scientists of the Philippines.
To conclude, we learn two lessons from the research experience of Laurence Heaney. First, research programs should be long-term to accomplish significant results; this book required several years in the making.
Second, collaboration is essential for mutual benefit of the partners, and for accomplishing the vision of the researcher.
_______________________________
Author’s email: suakcrem@yahoo.com
