What's so special about Asian tropical forests?

摘要

Tropical forests developed in isolation in five main areas during the Tertiary: Asia, New Guinea, Africa, Madagascar and the Neotropics. This paper aims to identify the unique ecological features of tropical Asia. Asian forests share taxa with New Guinea and Africa, but there are also some unique features. Most emphasis has been on the dominance of lowland moist forests by the Dipterocarpaceae, but the importance of Fagaceae in lowland forests is also unique. Among the vertebrates, gibbons (Hylobatidae), tree shrews (Scandentia), forest rhinoceroses (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis and Rhinoceros sondaicus) and lowland bears (Ursus arsinus, U. malayanus and U. thibetanus) are unique to Asia, as is the diversity of squirrels, babblers (Zosterops and Sylvia) and gliding vertebrates (flying squirrels, Dermoptera, Ptychozoon spp., Chrysopelea spp., and Rhacophorus spp.). Honeybees are shared with Africa, but only Asian forests support several coexisting species.