Macaronesia

The name Macaronesia is derived from the Greek words meaning "islands of the fortunate": (μακάρων νησοι or μακάρων νήσοι, makárōn nisoi). The name was first used by ancient Greek geographers to refer to any islands west of the Strait of Gibraltar. Macaronesia is occasionally misspelled "Macronesia" in false analogy with Micronesia, an unrelated group of archipelagos in the Pacific Ocean.

Flags of the Macaronesian archipelagos

Macaronesia consists of four main archipelagos. From north to south, these are:[6]

• the Azores, an Autonomous Region of Portugal
• Madeira (also including the Savage Islands), an Autonomous Region of Portugal
• the Canary Islands, an Autonomous Community of Spain
• Cape Verde, an independent West African country

Macaronesian archipelagos were, and are still, created by volcanic activity. Layers of volcanic tephra formed by the 1957 eruption of Capelinhos volcano on the island of Faial in the Azores.

The islands of Macaronesia are volcanic in origin, and are thought to be the product of several geologic hotspots.

The Macaronesian islands represent a wide range of climates. There are maritime temperate, Mediterranean, and subtropical climates in the Azores and Madeira; Mediterranean and subtropical climates in some of the Canary Islands; arid climates in certain geologically older islands of the Canaries (notably Lanzarote and Fuerteventura) and in some of the islands of the Madeira Archipelago (Selvagens and Porto Santo) and Cape Verde (Sal, Boa Vista and Maio); and a tropical climate in the younger islands of both of the southernmost archipelagos (Santo Antão, Santiago, and Fogo in Cape Verde). In some locations, there are variations in climate due to the rain shadow effect. The laurisilva forests of Macaronesia are a type of mountain cloud forest with relict plant species of a vegetation type that originally covered much of the Mediterranean Basin, when the climate of that region was more humid. These plant species, many of which are endemic, have evolved to adapt to the islands’ variable climactic conditions.

The Macaronesian islands have a biogeography that is unique in the world. They are home to several distinct plant and animal communities. Notably, the jumping spider genus Macaroeris is even named after Macaronesia. Because none of the Macaronesian islands were ever part of any continent, all of the native plants and animals reached the islands via long-distance dispersal. Laurel-leaved forests, called laurisilva, once covered most of the Azores, Madeira, and parts of the Canaries at an altitude of between 400 and 1200 m (the eastern Canaries and Cape Verde being too dry). These forests resemble the ancient forests that covered the Mediterranean basin and northwestern Africa before the cooling and drying of the ice ages. Trees of the genera Apollonias, Clethra, Dracaena, Ocotea, Persea, and Picconia, which are found in the Macaronesian laurel forests, are also known (from fossil evidence) to have flourished around the Mediterranean before the ice ages.

Primeval laurisilva forest. Some remaining patches of this threatened original native nature in Macaronesia were protected by law in 2001, except in Cape Verde.

Much of the original native vegetation has been displaced because of human activity, including felling forests for timber and firewood, clearing vegetation for grazing and agriculture, and introducing foreign plants and animals into the islands. The laurisilva habitat has been reduced to small disconnected pockets. As a result, many of the endemic biota of the islands are now seriously endangered or extinct. Alien predators – in particular domestic and feral cats – currently pose one of the most serious threats to the endemic fauna. Even though cats prey mostly on other foreign-introduced mammals, such as rodents and rabbits, the abundance of such prey sustains such a large feline population that it has initiated a so-called hyperpredation process), which further increases that population’s negative impact on the number of endemic reptiles and birds.[8]

Since 2001, the European Union’s conservation efforts, mandated by its Natura 2000 regulations, have resulted in the protection of large stretches of land and sea in the Azores, Madeira, and the Canary Islands, totaling 5000 km².[9]

• Fortunate Isles
• Geology of the Canary Islands
• Geology of Cape Verde
• Geology of Madeira
• List of islands in the Atlantic Ocean
• Laurel forest

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Macaronesia.

• European Union: Report on biodiversity in Macaronesia
• Review on cats' diet on Macaronesian islands