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Uneven rainfall and rock erosion have made Madagascar a hotspot for plants. Swiss researchers have found this explanation for the extraordinary biodiversity on the Indian Ocean island.

By doing so, they would likely have solved a mystery of natural history, according to a statement from the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) on Thursday. Madagascar is home to more than 11,000 plant species, 80 percent of which are found nowhere else on earth.

Destruction is threatened by humans

Together with researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich), WSL researchers led by Yi Liu have now shown in a study that uneven precipitation and rock erosion lead to continuous landscape changes. “Rainfall on the eastern side of the island causes the landscape to change dramatically over millions of years as erosion moves the ancient, mountainous slope inland,” said Yi Liu, WSL researcher and first author of the study.

As a result, living spaces are repeatedly separated and reconnected. According to the researchers, this process accelerates the emergence of new species that adapt to the changed habitat patterns. The results were published on Thursday in the journal Science.

The researchers expressed concerns about these results in the WSL announcement. “Our research shows that the evolution of the landscape took millions of years to create new habitats and therefore new species,” researcher Loïc Pellissier from ETH Zurich and WSL, who was involved in the study, said in the statement. “Humans are destroying biodiversity in just a few decades through massive climate interventions and the destruction of natural habitats.”

The previous theory was based on shifting tectonic plates

Until now, one of the main causes of high biodiversity has been the shifting of tectonic plates and the resulting formation of complex topography, as the WSL explained in the press release.

But Madagascar never fit this hypothesis. This is because tectonic activity in the country has been minimal for the past 100 million years. According to the researchers, the new theory should now be tested in other places with high biodiversity. (vos/sda)