Structural and compositional differences in gallery and spiny forests of Southern Madagascar: Implications for conservation of lemur and tree species.

ABSTRACT: Madagascar's unique dry forests, particularly gallery and spiny forests, face severe threats and are significantly understudied, leaving only a fraction of the original extent intact. Thus, there is a critical need for characterizing, conserving, and restoring this diverse forest ecosystem. Conducting extensive floristic surveys and environmental analyses, we investigated structural and compositional differences between the gallery and spiny forests, as well as within distinct gallery forest sites in Berenty Reserve in the south of the island. We also evaluated differences in habitat quality between the spiny and gallery forests for three species of diurnal lemurs in the reserve, and analyzed the current population trend of the tamarind trees, a species of ecological and cultural importanc

SUBMITTER: Mondragon-Botero A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11361438 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature