Biodiversity Hotspot Madagascar

With a size slightly above France or California, Madagascar extends over 12.5 latitudinal degrees. Along with a large topographical variety, this creates a great range of ecological communities and habitats (Gautier & Goodman 2003).

As different as those single biotopes are, they all share the fact that lots of their animals and plants are endemic and can only be found on Madagascar. Sadly, the biodiversity hotspot is more and more fragmentized because of anthropogenic interventions (Gautier & Goodman 2003). The consequence of this can be exemplarily seen by the fact, that many of the species found on the Mahafaly Plateau in southwestern Madagascar can also be found on the IUCN Red List.

11 % of all animals found on the Mahafaly Plateau are classified as at least Near Threatened.

14 % of all plants found on the plateau are classified as at least Vulnerable. If we excluded the non-evaluated species, 90 % of all found plants would count as Vulnerable or worse.

Learn more about the species diversity and their status of threat by clicking on the different classes of animals and plants:

Literatur

• L. Gautier, S. M. Goodman (2003). Introduction to the flora of Madagascar. In: The natural history of Madagascar. S. Goodman, J.P. Benstead (eds). pp. 229-232. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago, London.
• IUCN (2013). The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2013.2.