Abstract
Malaysia forms part of the equatorial belt of tropical rainforest. The world’s tropical rainforests occur in three great areas, the largest being in and around the Amazon basin, the next in Southeast Asia extending throughout the islands of the Malay Archipelago and the third being the forests of Central West Africa. There are also smaller areas of rainforest in Sri Lanka, the north east coast of Australia and Hawaii. These rainforests, particularly those in the three great areas, are of paramount importance to the world’s climate. They are ecological zones with the richest variety of plant and animal species of all environments on this planet. Although they occupy only about ten per cent of the land area of the world, they contain around seventy per cent of the world’s species of both flora and fauna.
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References
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Supplementary Reading
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© 1999 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Rogers, L.J. (1999). Fauna: Past, Present and Future. In: Kaur, A., Metcalfe, I. (eds) The Shaping of Malaysia. Studies in the Economies of East and South-East Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27079-8_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27079-8_4
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