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The National Museum of Natural History in Paris has traditionally been one of the centres of research on the flora of Madagascar. It holds a herbarium with roughly 700,000 Malagasy plant specimens and a seed bank and living collection, and continues to edit the Flore de Madagascar et des Comores series begun by Humbert in 1936. [47]
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 ...
Land cover (left) and topography (right) of Madagascar. The ecoregions of Madagascar, as defined by the World Wildlife Fund, include seven terrestrial, five freshwater, and two marine ecoregions. Madagascar's diverse natural habitats harbour a rich fauna and flora with high levels of endemism, but most ecoregions suffer from habitat loss.
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 ...
This category contains the native flora of Madagascar as defined by the World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions. Taxa of the lowest rank are always included; taxa of higher ranks (e.g. genus) are only included if monotypic or endemic. Include taxa here that are endemic or have restricted distributions (e.g. only a few ...
Madagascar is currently suffering in some areas from soil erosion as a result of deforestation and overgrazing, desertification, and contamination of surface water with raw sewage and organic waste. Several species of flora and fauna that are unique to the islands are endangered. Regular cyclones cause flooding in low-lying coastal regions.
Tropical storm Jeanne skimmed the north coast of Haiti, leaving 3,006 people dead in flooding and mudslides, mostly in the city of Gonaïves. [3] Earlier that year in May, floods killed over 3,000 people on Haiti's southern border with the Dominican Republic. [4] Haiti was again pummeled by tropical storms in late August and early September 2008.
The Madagascar dry deciduous forests represent a tropical dry forest ecoregion situated in the western and northern part of Madagascar. The area has high numbers of endemic plant and animal species but has suffered large-scale clearance for agriculture.