Lemurs in Madagascar Assignment Essay

What are Madagascar’s biomes? Discuss the major features of at least one of these biomes. Use the textbook for biome examples. Madagascar is a tropical rainforest, rain forest savanna and grasslands. The rain forest receives 120 inches of rain at least a year. It has very wet and dense vegetation within the trees. Anywhere from 70 plus percent of animal life lives in the trees. It is filled with lakes, river, swamps and a wide variety of different terrain. There is an overabundance of green plant life that strives on the heavy rains received each year. The forest floor is full of nutrients which the large tree strive on giving the canopy effects and which houses so much plant and animal life. 2. What changes happening in Madagascar are posing challenges for lemurs? Give details about the sources, time scale, and types of change. All the time the environment is changing by people moving in and getting more populated. As people come into a new area they may alter a Lemurs normal route or main food supply in the area by cutting down a certain tree such as bamboo. 3. Which types of lemurs are adapting to the changes? Which types of lemurs are not adapting well? Why? The less vulnerable lemurs are good at adapting to a secondary environment with people. The vulnerable or endangered lemurs are having hard time moving and settling into a new food source or habitat which is causing them to go  extinct faster. Ringtail lemurs can adapt and defiantly go to multiple environments. 4. What behavioral and physical traits are being favored in lemurs in the changing Madagascar environment? People are studying lemurs to find out if you can teach other lemurs certain straight so that can adapt to a new type of environment. Such as eating habitats and what they eat. How the move and migrate from place to place. 5. Why might lemurs not evolve to adapt to the changes in Madagascar? They may not never adapt due to the constant changes in the environment nonstop. Some lemurs can adapt with evolution over hundreds of year but with humans within a few years they can destroy an entire habitat along with food sources within a year. The constant changes always leave the lemurs on their toes. Constantly roaming from one place to another 6. Which biogeochemical cycles may be altered by anthropogenic activities on Madagascar, and how? Many things may be altered such as the soils and living organisms by people moving into the new areas in such a rapid rate. What toll does this take on the environments such as global warming and pollutants in that areas now? What do the changes in the smaller spectrum of things do to the overall climate? Reference â€Å"Lemurs in Madagascar: Surviving on an Island of Change.† Films Media Group, 2006. Films On Demand.