The new genus’ of shrew mouse was given a scientific name of Baletemys which means “Balete’s mouse”. It was in honor of the work of the late biologist Danilo “Danny” Balete who made the discovery while on expedition in Mount Kampalili in Mindanao on 2007 and 2010 as part of a Field Museum collaboration with the Philippine Eagle Foundation. The museum wanted to know what mammals lived alongside one of the largest and most critically endangered birds, the Philippine eagle (Pithecophaga jefferyi). While on Mount Kampalili, Balete and the team made a startling discovery: a dark brown mouse with small eyes and a long, tapering nose like a shrew, different from anything he had seen on that island. It looked more like mice he had seen hundreds of miles away on the island of Luzon. High up in the mountains, Danny was able to get cell phone service and sent a text message to Lawrence “Larry” Heaney, the curator of mammals at Chicago’s Field Museum with the information that the shrew mice looks a lot like the ones from Luzon and it should not be found in the Mindanao specifically in Mt Kampalili.
Specimens of the new mouse were shipped to the Field Museum for further analysis to confirm Balete’s discovery. And despite Danny Balete’s death, his colleagues continued to study the specimens from his fieldwork. Dakota Rowsey, the study’s first author and who was then then a postdoctoral researcher with Heaney, led a DNA analysis of the shrew mouse and found that Balete was right. The rodent was different from any species known to science.
“That DNA study demonstrated that the new mouse was not related to the species up in the northern Philippines but to species from Mindanao. It appears as though this is a remarkable case of what biologists call convergence—distantly related species that have independently evolved to resemble each other in ways that allow them to use habitats and resources in similar ways,” says Rowsey.