Bridging the gap: The first description of the Morphology and Diversity of Non-Volant Small Mammal Species in an unprotected forest in Central Kalimantan, Borneo.

Abstract

In the past 50 years, around 30% of Borneo has been deforested. Despite an increase in conservation and research effort, taxonomic and geographic biases mean vast areas of Borneo’s tropical forests remain undescribed and unprotected. This study provides the first survey of the non-volant, small mammal community inhabiting the Rungan Landscape, Borneo. Data from four months of Capture-mark- recapture surveys in three distinct habitat types has revealed a small mammal community of 12 species from 3 different orders. A range expansion of Maxomys ochraceiventer, plus the potential discovery of a new Maxomys species highlights the lack of knowledge of this taxon and how its species are distributed across Borneo. Morphological discrepancies found between observed and the expected morphology described in existing literature demonstrates the issues of generalising data across regions. Significant differences were found in small mammal composition and richness across habitat types which provides supporting evidence for the habitat complementarity principle and habitat heterogeneity hypothesis in the Rungan Landscape. I found that within this forest mosaic, low pole forest has the highest number of specialist species, endemics and the highest overall species richness which contradicts previous beliefs that peat-swamp forests have low-levels of biodiversity. Findings from this study have increased our ecological knowledge about the small mammal species inhabiting this region and demonstrated the positive effect of landscape heterogeneity on biodiversity. With information on the distribution and diversity of species widely used as a basis for setting conservation priorities, this data will increase the efficacy of proposed conservation efforts and highlight the importance of protecting this landscape to protect this small mammal community as well as the overall biodiversity of this landscape.