Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Madagascar's varied fauna and flora are endangered by human activity. [24] Since the arrival of humans around 2,350 years ago, Madagascar has lost more than 90 percent of its original forest. [25] This forest loss is largely fueled by tavy ("fat"), a traditional slash-and-burn agricultural practice imported to Madagascar by the earliest ...
The history of the fauna of Madagascar in the context of plate tectonics and paleoclimate over the last 200 million years (Aepyornithidae arrived later than is indicated). A good example of Malagasy convergent evolution is the fossa, a Malagasy carnivore that has evolved in appearance and behaviour to be so like a large cat that it was originally classified in Felidae, when it is in fact more ...
Madagascar Eastern Highlands includes the middle and upper catchments of Madagascar's eastern coastal rivers. [ 4 ] Northwestern Madagascar encompasses the westward-flowing drainage basins from the northern tip of Madagascar to the Mahavavy du Sud River, including the Mananjeba , North Mahavavy (Mahavavy du Nord), Sambirano , Ankofia , Sofia ...
Having completed its separation from all other land masses more than 60 million years ago, Madagascar’s plant and animal life evolved in isolation. The rainforests are inscribed for their importance to both ecological and biological processes as well as their biodiversity and the threatened species they support.
As of 2018, 343 families of vascular plants and bryophytes, with roughly 12,000 species, were known according to the Catalogue of the plants of Madagascar. Many plant groups are still insufficiently known. [2] Madagascar is the island with the second-highest number of vascular plants, behind New Guinea. [3]
It is within the Madagascar spiny forests or "spiny desert" of southern Madagascar, a globally distinctive ecoregion. [5] This is the area with the highest level of plant endemism in Madagascar, with 48% of the genera and 95% of the species endemic [6] and is listed as one of the 200 most important ecological regions in the world. [7]
It contains the largest of Madagascar's limestone tsingy fields, as well as dry forest, bush, rainforest and savanna. The biodiversity contained in this park is among the richest of any protected natural area in the world: 87% of the plants and animals are endemic to Madagascar, and 45% are uniquely endemic to the region around the park.
Madagascar, [a] officially the Republic of Madagascar, [b] is an island country that includes the island of Madagascar and numerous smaller peripheral islands. Lying off the southeastern coast of Africa, it is the world's fourth largest island (after Greenland, New Guinea, and Borneo), the second-largest island country (after Indonesia), and the 46th largest country overall. [14]