Every endemic is a wonderful ornament of the planet Earth

Cosmopolitan and endemic are biological species that are opposite to each other in the range of habitats. The name speaks for itself: ἔνδημος in Greek means "local". The life activity of representatives of flora or fauna on any limited space is called endemism.

Where do they live?

Endemic plants, like endemic animals, birds, insects, usually occur in a single valley, on a mountain range, in a desert or on an oceanic island. It can be said that endemics are rich in places that had no longer biological contacts with representatives of the flora and fauna of other lands. This, for example, Madagascar, Hawaii, St. Helena.

In the stony desert of Namib in Africa, an unusual plant grows Welwitschia mirabilis - Velvichia is amazing, it is, as if a low geyser, hacking out from the dry hot sand, astonishes the traveler with unexpected beauty.

Old and new

The areas on which endemic species can be found are not strictly limited in size, they can be quite large. Endemic sciences also call such species of plants and animals that are distributed on one continent or a part of it. For example, most eucalyptus trees grow in Australia and New Zealand, one species of this plant is found only in the Philippines. The same happened with a special kind of coniferous species - metasequoia (Metasequoia glyptostroboides), which can grow to thirty meters in height. It was believed to have disappeared from the Earth, but in the middle of the last century, scientists discovered these trees in the mountain forests of the Chinese province of Sichuan. Then the metasequoia was found in some limited territories of the Northern Hemisphere. Experts argue that such an endemic is a representative of ancient species, which is more accurately called paleoendemic. In contrast, there are so-called neoendemics - new species that arise in isolated areas.

Who lives in the clean water of Lake Baikal

Emerged more than 25 million years ago, the deepest freshwater body is famous for a large number of endemic species. Experts have found out that every third inhabitant of Lake Baikal is endemic. These are fish (Baikal shovels, golomyanka, omul), crustaceans (bokoplav), invertebrates (Baikal sponges).

Lake Baikal boasts a magnificent freshwater seal, also called Baikal seal. This endemic is found in the northern and middle parts of the lake. Wintering Baikal seals in holes under snow or ice, raking up special air blasts - air holes. Researchers believe that the seal came to Baikal from the Arctic Ocean through the northern Yenisei and Angara rivers during the ice age.

Modern relics

Among the other most famous endemic animals, we can name the Marshes and the Oviparous. The most ancient paleoendemics are also called living fossils. Among them, scientists identify a group of almost completely extinct kisteperyh fish. Fins of these representatives of the water kingdom are located on muscle lobes. Today, the only specimens of cystepers are the endemic fish discovered in 1938, called the coelacanths. One species of this fish lives near the southern and eastern coasts of Africa, and the other near Sulawesi Island in Indonesia.

Many endemics are listed in the International Red Book. Among them is the Caspian seal, which is on the verge of extinction . In the tropics of South-West India, there lives a woody lion-tailed macaque, which is still called the Wander, and there are no more than two and a half thousand individuals on the Earth. One of the most vulnerable species of animals on the planet is the Madagascar beak-breasted tortoise.

The word "endemic" has a figurative meaning, it is sometimes metaphorically used when speaking of cultural characteristics that take place in an ethnographic, religious, or some other local group.