Geographic Range. There are two species in the genus Hemicentetes, H. semispinosus and H. nigriceps; both are found only on Madagascar.Lowland streaked tenrecs (H. semispinosus) are found in the rainforests on the east side of the island and highland streaked tenrecs (H. nigriceps) are found in humid forest and plateau savanna boundary habitat in the central upland portion of Madagascar.
While one of the criteria to define an area as a hotspot is having at least 1,500 endemic plant species, Madagascar alone possesses an astounding 11,200. This endemism is not limited to plants: the island is home to five families of birds, five families of primates and two families of freshwater fish found nowhere else on the planet. A striking 250,000 species of animal reside there—70 percent of which are endemic—and a good number of them are endangered. While they may have been immortalized by the Disney film, the real wildlife in Madagascar is far more wondrous than anything computer animation can come up with. 10 Flat-Tailed Geckos Sauther’s interest in the cats’ origins was piqued when one of her own study subjects, a ring-tailed lemur, went missing. “ [Its] microchip turned up in the scat of one of the forest catsMadagascar has "only" 258 bird species, although 115 of these are endemic (with 36 endemic genera, Madagascar has more unique genera than any other African country. Madagascar also possesses five endemic families of birds).Endemic Species Red Ruffed Lemur, an endemic species found in the island country of Madagascar. An endemic species is one that exists only within a specific place, region, or geographic area. This area can range in any size, from a particular ecosystem to an entire continent, but the species in question only resides there.
However, our knowledge of the species in Madagascar is still poor. Lecomtella madagascariensis, an endemic Madagascan grass, was recently collected and sequenced for the first time using Next Generation Sequencing, where DNA is broken into tiny fragments and specialist algorithms are used to reassemble the sequences of those fragments.
1hbl.