One of the greatest places to see Peruvian wildlife in the Amazon is Manu National Park. That is why, despite its isolated location, hundreds of tourists visit Manu each year. The Manu National Park was established more than four decades ago. It was named a UNESCO Biosphere Preserve in 1977 and a UNESCO-listed World Heritage Site in 1987.
Manu National Park has also set a new biodiversity record, ensuring that even more people than usual will be interested in adding this to their itinerary!
The Manu National Park includes a variety of landscapes, including cloud forests, lowland rainforests, and Andean grasslands. This makes it the ideal home for over 1000 different species of birds. It is a bird watcher’s paradise! The same is true for those who enjoy viewing various butterfly species because it is said that there are more than 1200 butterfly species in this area.
With data showing that it is home to 155 amphibian species and 132 reptile species. The Manu National Park has already broken the global record for biodiversity by having the greatest number of amphibians and reptiles. We know, it’s a lot! Yasuni National Park in Ecuador had previously occupied the top place, with 150 amphibian and 121 reptile species.
Manu is one of the most diversified habitats in the world for a wide variety of species. It also provides a buffer zone for amphibians and reptiles, according to Rudolf van May. He is one of the researchers involved in this study from the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at UC Berkeley.
Illinois Wesleyan University, the University of California, Berkeley, and Southern Illinois University in Carbondale collaborated on this study. It was then published in the journal Biota Neotropica.
The researchers used numerous sources, including those from organizations like the National Geographic Society and the Amazon Conservation Association. They also carefully analyzed different elevations and examined hundreds of museum specimens collected from various areas of Manu National Park and the nearby buffer zones.
The analysis of DNA sequences and frog calls, which enabled the identification of new animal species. This was the most important factor in helping to create this new biodiversity record in Manu National Park.
Since there is no doubt that this number of discoveries will continue to rise in the future, there won’t be any place in the world that has biodiversity as rich as this one. More importantly, experts predict that the number will rise for amphibians and reptiles in particular due to the growing use of DNA analysis, ongoing research into frog calls, and a few other procedures.
This is because according to the researchers’ estimation, the Manu National Park has 1.5 percent of all reptiles and 2.2 percent of all amphibians in the world. This only making up 0.01 percent of the earth’s natural geographical area!