Development of endemicity and conservation importance indices for tropical forests and the floral diversity assessment of Mt. Natoo in Benguet, Philippines

The scientific community faces the challenge of measuring progress toward biodiversity targets and indices have been traditionally used. However, recent inventories in secondary tropical mountain forests using traditional biodiversity indices have yielded results that are indistinct with primary ones. This shows the need to develop complementary indices that goes beyond species count but integrates the distribution and conservation status of the species. This study developed endemicity and conservation importance index for tropical forest that incorporated the distribution and conservation status of the species. These indices were applied to Mt. Natoo, a remnant primary mossy forest in Buguias, Benguet, Philippines, that resulted to endemicity index of 81.07 and conservation importance index of 42.90. Comparing these with secondary forest sites with comparable Shannon-Wiener, Simpson, Evenness and Margalef's indices, our endemicity and conservation indices clearly differentiates primary forest (our study site) with higher values from secondary forests with much lower values. Thus, we are proposing these indices for a direct but scientifically-informed identification of specific sites for conservation and protection in tropical forests. Additionally, our study documented a total of 168 vascular plant species (79 endemic and 12 locally threatened species) in Mt. Nato-o. Majority are of tropical elements for both generic and species levels with some temperate elements that could be attributed to the site's high elevation and semi-temperate climate. These are important baseline information for conservation plans and monitoring of tropical mossy forests.