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Panorama: Madagascar spiny desert
| Title | Info |
|---|---|
| Common name | Octopus tree |
| Scientific name | Didieraceae |
| Level | Family |
| Source | Dan L. Perlman |
| Ecosystems | Other |
| Conservation | Endangered ecosystems |
| Lessons | Ecosystem Sampler; Endangered ecosystems; Panoramas |
| Date | July 24, 2007 |
| Location | Ifotaka,Madagascar,Africa |
Spiny desert (or spiny forest) is an ecosystem type that is found only in the dry southern regions of Madagascar. This image shows the silhouettes of several "Octopus Trees," plants in the family Didiereaceae. When you play the panorama version that has sound, you will hear crickets at first followed by the sound of two owls hooting back and forth.
Madagascar, the world's fourth-largest island, is also one of the world's biodiversity hotspots. The island has a land mass about the size of Montana and Idaho combined, and at its closest is little more than 300 miles (500 km) from Africa--yet it has been isolated from the continent for approximately 160 million years. The vast majority of the island's species are endemic (found nowhere else in the world) and the native ecosystems are under heavy threat from human encroachment, especially deforestation for subsistence agriculture. The island contains several very different ecosystem types, ranging from tropical rainforest in the northeast through shrublands and dry forests to spiny desert (or spiny forest) in the south. Many ecologists agree that as an ecosystem type, spiny desert is itself endemic, that there is nothing else like it in the world. The table below, with data from Conservation International, shows just how high a proportion of Madagascar's species are found nowhere else on earth. In fact, many of the island's species are endemic to just a single ecosystem type or even just a small portion of an ecosystem type.
Taxonomic Group | Species | Endemic Species | Percent Endemism |
Plants | 13,000 | 11,600 | 89.2 |
Mammals | 155 | 144 | 92.9 |
Birds | 310 | 181 | 58.4 |
Reptiles | 384 | 367 | 95.6 |
Amphibians | 230 | 229 | 99.6 |
Freshwater Fishes | 164 | 97 | 59.1 |
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Click here to read about this biodiversity hotspot.
