09 Dec New species discovered in Malawi and Mozambique
Featured image: Western side of Mulanje Mountain in Sunset, seen from Likhubula Falls by Felefuchs – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0
Scientists studying a chain of thirty free-standing mountains in southern Malawi and northern Mozambique have identified at least 127 plant species, 45 species of birds, mammals, and reptiles, as well as 45 types of butterflies, crabs, and other invertebrates that occur nowhere else on earth.
These findings are so important that the area has been proposed as a new ecoregion to be known as the Southeast Africa Montane Archipelago (SEAMA).
More than 100 scientists from many countries participated in the project which has been running for more than 20 years.
“We documented hundreds of previously undescribed species, and researched the geology, climate, and genetic history of the ecosystems, to piece together what makes the mountains so unique,” Professor Julian Bayliss, the lead author of the study said.
Professor Bayliss, a Professor at the Oxford Brookes University in Britain and a member of the National Network for Community Management of Natural Resources in Mozambique, said that “ecoregions define large expanses of land or water, characterised by geographically distinct assemblages of animals and plants. New ecoregion definitions are rare and typically follow many years of research across a range of scientific disciplines.”
The thirty free-standing granite mountains are known as inselbergs, and tower over the surrounding landscape like “islands in the sky”. All rise over 1000 metres above sea level.
Due to their age, they were formed hundreds of millions of years ago, and because of their geographic isolation from the surrounding landscape the inselbergs have developed unique ecosystems of montane grasslands and various types of forest.
Some species only occur on one or two specific mountains and Mount Namuli in Mozambique hosts no fewer than 19 endemic species of plants (they occur nowhere else).
A previously undescribed species of bush viper was discovered living on one mountain and six species of pygmy chameleons described by the research have been shown to have split from their east African relatives six million years ago.
The researchers warn that the region is under threat from people cutting down trees to make charcoal and from “slash-and-burn” farming which involves removing all indigenous vegetation for crops. They report that on average the mountains have lost about 20 percent of their rainforest in the last twenty years.
“There is so much more to discover but many of these species may go extinct before we can record them,” Dr Harith Farooq, a biologist from the University of Lúrio in Mozambique and co-author of the study, said.
