Ecosystem Spotlight: Tsingy

Madagascar lies about 300 miles off the eastern coast of Africa, and is home to thousands of plants and animals that live nowhere else in the world. In many cases, such as the lemurs, tenrecs, vanga shrikes, and mantella frogs, entire radiations of species have evolved from a single ancestor that arrived there long ago, and expanded to colonize every ecosystem on the island. Out of all of Madagascar's ecosystems, probably the most bizarre and little-known, even today, are the ranges of razor-sharp limestone peaks known to the natives as Tsingy.
By their very nature, the Tsingy are difficult to explore. The word means "place where one cannot walk barefoot" in Malagasy (the main indigenous language of Madagascar), and traditional rock-climbing equipment are unsuitable for them. This inhospitality to humans has ensured that the endemic animals and plants of the Tsingy have stayed undisturbed. New discoveries are still trickling in even today: a bat in 2005, a frog in 2007, a dwarf lemur in 2000. One of the largest recently-discovered animals of the Tsingy was a species of lemur named after British comedian John Cleese.
The Tsingy are also, however home to one of the smallest vertebrates in the world, the dwarf chameleon. Less than two inches long and weighing less than a quarter, it inhabits the vegetation on the lower levels of the Tsingy, where it hunts for small insects.
The Tsingy are a layered skyscraper of habitats. The very topmost layers--the jagged peaks that are clearly visible when one looks at the area from above--are almost devoid of life, save for some scarce lichens and mosses, and whatever birds and insects may visit them. Lower down, plants grow in pockets of soil that accumulate in the sides of the peaks, and at the very bottom shrubs and small trees push their way towards the light in between the towers of limestone. It is in these lower layers that most animals also live.
The Tsingy are an ecosystem with no direct equivalent anywhere else in the world, so they--even more so than the rest of Madagascar, which is truly saying something--need to be preserved at all costs. They provide an indispensable part of the "alien world" image of Madagascar, while at the same time seeming like something out of an alien world themselves.

High atop a Tsingy, several gnarled trees grow. Although they may look inhospitable, Tsingys are refuges for a wide variety of animals and plants.