The UPLB Museum of Natural History is glad to announce that it will be participating in an upcoming research collaboration which will be conducted in Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines with funding from the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST).

According to Prof. Phillip A. Alviola, curator for bats and other small mammals at the Museum, the JST has just approved the funding of five proposals submitted by scientists as a response to the call for non-medical research as countermeasures for COVID-19 under the e-ASIA Joint Research Program (e-ASIA JRP).

The search for the new Director of the UPLB Museum of Natural History is now ongoing! The Search Committee is now inviting stakeholders to nominate potential candidates for the position.

Who may nominate?

• Personnel of the unit
• Curators, students and other stakeholders of the unit
• Alumni of the unit

The UPLB Museum of Natural History recently received a sizeable donation consisting of thousands of shell specimens from the Baysac family of Binan, Laguna. The Baysac Family bequeathed the specimens to the museum after several correspondences by Janet Martires of Los Baños-based NGO Yakap Kalikasan with Coordinator for Collections Management, Jeremy Carlo B. Naredo.

The UPLB Museum of Natural History is advising all clients such as students, researchers and scientists, members of the academe, government and private sectors, as well as the general public that it is now implementing a new schedule of fees for (1) entrance to its Integrated Biodiversity Exhibit and Hortorium and (2) analytical services starting 01 January 2021.

The implementation of the new scheduled is approved by the Office of the Chancellor, through Memo No. 171 (see bit.ly/MNH-rates-approval) last 20 November 2020.

For quick reference, please download the schedule via this link: https://bit.ly/MNH-new-rates.

A new Philippine False Gecko, named Pseudogekko hungkag, has been described from Sorsogon province by an international team of herpetologists, after thorough study of field collections made in the Bicol Region from 2015–2017.

Camila G. Meneses, a junior researcher at the UPLB Museum of Natural History and member of the field expedition team shared that the discovery has been recently announced, and the descriptive article published, by the international, peer-reviewed journal Herpetologica.

Field biologists from the UPLB Museum of Natural History and their international collaborators are elated with the formal announcement of their rediscoveries of two reptiles – a skink and a gecko – as a result of field expeditions done in Sibuyan Island, Romblon in 2016 and 2017.

According to Camila Meneses, a junior researcher who led the two herpetofaunal survey expeditions in Sibuyan’s Mt. Guiting-Guiting, said that they have been able to find, collect and ascertain the identify of the secretive and elusive Brachymeles dalawangdaliri (Scincidae) and Pseudogekko isapa (Gekkonidae).

B. dalawangdaliri and P. isapa can only be found in the Romblon Island Group and nowhere else in the world.