Short Wave

<New in Peru: 27 species previously undiscovered by science

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EMILY KWONG: You're listening to Short Wave from NPR.

REGINA BARBER: Hey, Short Wavers, it's Regina Barber. And the story I have for you starts in northern Peru, where the Amazon basin meets the Andes mountains.

TROND LARSEN: The Alto Mayo is this lush valley surrounded by mountains. You have a high diversity of different soil types, different vegetation types and microclimates as you change in elevation. And that creates this really dynamic and vibrant mosaic with all different kinds of life.

BARBER: That's Trond Larsen. He's an ecologist at Conservation International, a nonprofit organization based in Arlington, Virginia. He says that this area in Peru straddles two preserves, the Altamira Protection Forest and the Cordillera Escalera Regional Conservation Area, and it's being deforested. It's also under threat of more deforestation, because all that lushness makes it a great place for growing major agricultural products like pineapples, coffee, and chocolate.

LARSEN: There's also a significant human presence. It's very much a human-dominated landscape.

BARBER: Trond and a team of 12 Peruvian scientists led a 38-day expedition into the area in the summer of 2022, guided by experts from the local Indigenous tribe, the Awajún. And along the way, they set up data sensors to complete the survey. The goal was to create a management plan that benefits both the local people and the land, based on a survey of all the local plant and animal life.

LARSEN: The very first night after arriving, I wolfed my dinner down, and I was so eager to get out on the trail, into the forest, get my headlamp on, and see what might be out there, things that I'd never seen before.

BARBER: And almost immediately, it became clear, there were a lot more critters out there than they thought.

LARSEN: Just a few minutes after walking into the forest, I look around, and I'm looking in the vegetation. And just about chest height is this small bronze, beautiful salamander on a leaf with stubby little legs and, you know, a stubby tail, robust, chunky tail. And it was just so exciting because salamanders in the tropics are very rare to see.

BARBER: This little bronze salamander climbing in the vegetation turned out to be more than just rare. It was completely new to science.

LARSEN: You wake up every day-- it kind of feels like Christmas. Well, what am I going to find today? You know, we set out traps to catch things. And you go and, you know, revise the previous day's traps, and what am I going to find? And you get these incredible new discoveries. So every day, there's unexpected things.

BARBER: And they continued to make many more discoveries over the course of the expedition.

LARSEN: We were very surprised by the number of species we found. We documented over 2,000 species over this time period, which is a shocking number. Finding so many species of vertebrate animals, of mammals, four new species of mammals, that's almost unheard of on an expedition like this.

BARBER: In all, the team recorded 2,046 species, 27 of which were previously unknown in the scientific world. Today, on the show, preserving Peru, we take a look at the species the researchers found in the Alto Mayo and their importance to the Awajún, who live there, plus-- my personal favorite-- the blob-headed catfish. I'm Regina Barber, and you're listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

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BARBER: So this expedition all started with Conservation International, trying to understand the local habitat in this area of Peru to either protect what was there or, if needed, work to restore parts of the habitat, so that all of the wildlife could continue to move around easily and healthily. To do that, they really had to understand the ecosystem-- what's there, how it moves, how it lives. And that's how Trond, plus the Peruvian researchers and their Awajún guides, ended up starting this assessment.

DIEGO DOUROJEANNI: So the idea is that we looked at the landscape and said, what else is there?

BARBER: Diego Dourojeanni is an anthropologist with Conservation International. His job was to help the researchers work alongside the people living with the land, who already know the landscape. He said he was only there for a few days of the expedition and followed Trond during that time.

DOUROJEANNI: We went up this mountain, very steep and, you know, very tricky to go up.

BARBER: So he stayed put, as the team continued up, photographing some of the species the team found. And he even had a favorite finding, but he didn't get to see it in person.

DOUROJEANNI: My favorite species, I think, has got to be one of the mammals. I would say maybe the rat, but my wife hates rats.

BARBER: The rat Diego's referring to is actually a mouse, a swimming mouse that Trond said belonged to a group of semi-aquatic rodents.

LARSEN: You know, they're among the rarest groups of mammals in the world. On this expedition, we were really lucky to find an individual in this small patch of swamp forest. It's a kind of mouse that has partially webbed toes because it lives a lot of its life underwater, where it swims and it hunts and preys on aquatic insects.

BARBER: And that wasn't the only new mammal. The team documented three more species that were new to science-- a squirrel, a bat, a spiny mouse. On top of that, there were eight new fish species. One of them was my personal favorite from the study, the blob-headed catfish. It had, like, a body of a catfish. It was gray, spiny fins. The tail, like, you would expect to see. But then the head, it just transitions into this cartoonish, swollen Squidward nose. But the interesting thing is that blob-headed fish wasn't a new discovery for everyone. Like, it definitely wasn't new to Yulisa Tiwi [INAUDIBLE], an Indigenous woman on the team.

YULISA TIWI: [SPEAKING SPANISH]

INTERPRETER: For me, it's funny because we've been taught-- the fish that they'd discovered, well, we've always eaten it, right? It's in the river. We eat it frequently in traditional dishes. So for them to say that it's something new, well, this is something that we've eaten since childhood. So when a scientist and tells us that this is something new for the scientific community, we just say, wow. Like, that's new. That's different. Let's take a look at all the other species we have.

BARBER: It's not just the blob-headed catfish that's integral to daily life for locals. Yulisa says the forest has always been a really critical part of the Awajún culture.

TIWI: [SPEAKING SPANISH]

INTERPRETER: Because our people, without our forest, we are not Awajún. Like, our customs are in the forest. Our traditions are in the forest. Our worldview is in the forest.

BARBER: For example, the Awajún have a long tradition as warriors. And there were stories that Yulisa's grandparents would tell her about a specific kind of frog, the Atelopus frog, that warriors would use to poison the tips of their weapons.

TIWI: [SPEAKING SPANISH]

INTERPRETER: Centuries ago, times ago, we lived in war, so it was something very much needed and sought.

BARBER: During the expedition, the team found that same frog that Yulisa remembers from the stories. These frogs are very rare, and Trond said they'd never been documented at this elevation before. Even Yulisa thought they had vanished from the forests.

TIWI: [SPEAKING SPANISH]

INTERPRETER: Everything that I had been told by my grandparents-- so being able to see it-- to see that species-- was a bit thrilling. Being able to say, wow, this species still exists-- we can extract its venom to kill whoever we want.

BARBER: Overall, Yulisa was happy that Conservation International collaborated with the Awajún people during the expedition. She says she hopes this is something that other scientists can add to their research, too, not just working with Indigenous folks, but with Indigenous women in particular.

TIWI: [SPEAKING SPANISH]

INTERPRETER: Because women are the ones who possess more traditional knowledge. They have a deep knowledge of the territory of their forests. They know about the food, about medicinal and edible plants, how to move around during the night and guide you on a hike. So all that deep knowledge is owned by women-- I mean, men, too, of course. But it's the women who know more. So for this kind of research, it becomes crucial to allow women's participation and to always involve the Awajún people.

BARBER: Reporting this episode, it was clear that Trond and Diego shared this sentiment and really saw the value in Yulisa and her people being guides to show scientists where to find the animals and give a more complete picture of the landscape. That more holistic approach echoed a larger point Diego had about the expedition.

DOUROJEANNI: It's just one part of a much larger intervention that seeks not only first to know what's there, and, in parallel, to work with the local populations to know why are-- why is this deforestation occurring in this landscape, and to try to promote solutions to slow down the rate of deforestation and to promote restoration of the forests.

BARBER: This area, full of human life, was also full of biodiversity. It was a place, up until now, scientists really hadn't thought to look at. It just makes you wonder, what else is out there that the scientific community hasn't seen? And who already knows about it?

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BARBER: If you want to see some of the species from the Alto Mayo, check out our digital story. We'll link it in our show notes. Special thanks to Valentina Rodriguez Sanchez for her beautiful voiceover work and to [? Daniela ?] [? Amico ?] for interpreting. This episode was produced by Hannah Chinn and edited by our showrunner, Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones checked the facts, and Jimmy Keeley was the audio engineer. Beth Donovan is our senior director, and Collin Campbell is our senior vice president of podcasting strategy. I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

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