Tag: Madagascar

Vom Aussterben bedrohte Tierarten
Extremely rare species: northern sportive lemur, Devils Hole pupfish, and cherry-throated tanager (© Wikimedia Commons – Lemur: Edward E. Louis, Jr, CC BY-SA 4.0 / Fish: Olin Feuerbacher, Public Domain / Bird: Jens Bokelaar, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Which animals are threatened with extinction? These 8 species have fewer than 100 individuals

Species extinction is rarely an abrupt event. In many cases, the decline stretches over decades until only small, isolated remnant populations remain. Some of these species now survive with fewer than 100 individuals worldwide. Such extremely small populations are especially vulnerable to chance events, genetic impoverishment, and ongoing habitat loss.

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Historical depiction of elephant bird
Historical depiction of Aepyornis maximus. Our knowledge of the elephant birds’ external appearance is incomplete: there are no preserved specimens, only bone finds and eggshells. Reconstructions therefore rely on anatomical inferences and comparisons with modern ratites. (© http://www.50birds.com/gextinct5.htm, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Aepyornis maximus – the largest elephant bird and the mystery of when it went extinct

There wasn’t just one elephant bird The elephant bird is probably one of the best-known of all extinct birds. Hardly any other animal so strongly embodies gigantism, enigmatic traditions, and the fascination of a world of animals that humans now know only in fragments. But the name already misleads: there

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blue-eyed black lemur (Eulemur flavifrons)
First rediscovered in 1983 and now critically endangered (CR): the blue-eyed black lemur (Eulemur flavifrons). Its habitat has almost completely disappeared, and targeted hunting is placing additional pressure on this rare species. (© Mathias Appel, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Lemurs on the brink of extinction: why 95% of species are threatened – and how the meat trade is accelerating their decline

For more than 50 million years, lemurs have lived exclusively on Madagascar, where they evolved in complete isolation into more than 100 species known today – from the tiny mouse lemur to the imposing indri. Nowhere else on any continent or island do they exist in the wild. Yet in

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Im Makira-Wald wiederentdeckt: Tausenfüßler Spirostreptus sculptus
An expedition to the Makira Forest in Madagascar rediscovered the millipede Spirostreptus sculptus, which had been missing for more than 125 years. (© Dmitry Telnov)

Madagascar: Expedition Rediscovers 21 Lost Species in the Makira Forest

A scientific expedition to the Makira Forest, the largest and best-preserved forest area in Madagascar, has rediscovered 21 species long lost to science. Among the rediscovered species are three iridescent, nearly transparent fish species and a millipede last documented 126 years ago. The expedition was part of the Search for

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Epactoides giganteus
The back of the scarab beetle E. giganteus was completely black, red-brown at the sides, with yellow hairs and brownish mouthparts, feet and antennae. (© Rossini M, Vaz-de-Mello FZ, Montreuil O, Porch N, Tarasov S (2021) <a href="https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1061.70130" target="blank"Extinct before discovered? Epactoides giganteus sp. nov. (Coleoptera, Scarabaeidae, Scarabaeinae), the first native dung beetle to Réunion island. ZooKeys 1061: 75-86.)

Epactoides giganteus (scarab beetle)

First extinct, then discovered: the scarab beetle Epactoides giganteus In 1817, the French botanist Nicolas Bréon found himself on Réunion, part of the Mascarene island group, which he would not leave again until 1833 due to health problems. During his time there he was director of the botanical garden Jardin

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