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Everywhere is unique, then. My point is, there are glaciers in Colombia, Venezuela (I think there is just one left), Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Argentina, and this fauna assemblage can be more or less found in any of these countries. Just go to the Ibera wetlands and you will also find jaguars, cougars, caimans, otters, toucans, macaws, capybaras, tapirs, peccaries, ocelots, anacondas (the yellow one), anteaters, howler monkeys, deers, characid fish, etc.
Are they the same biome? Not exactly but roughly equivalent
No, Colombia is unique for the very reasons I've stated and that you fail to accept when it's more than clear to see.
Argentina may have an equivalent to the Llanos in the form of wetlands but Peru and Ecuador do not. Ecuador doesn't have deserts, Peru doesn't have tropical coastal biomes, Argentina less so - anything tropical for that matter, whereas Colombia does have glacial habitat not only glacial habitat but forests that resemble sub-tropical forests in latitudes further afield. That's the diverse span which makes it unique which other countries simply don't have.
I'm assuming you're discounting the Paramo forests when you say no snowy forests in Colombia then?
Also do you think when it snows it just stops at the mountain snowline? Well no, it doesn't and even gets frosty and misty in places as low as Bogota, so what do you think happens a few hundred metres up at the 3k line or a kilometre up like at the 3.5k line or a whole mile up like at the 4k line? Do you really think those forests get no snow ever? Sure its infrequent, maybe only twice maybe three times a year but oh yes forests get snowy and by the by if we're getting technical as you seem to be, that's more a climatic condition than a geographic one.
This is Sumapaz a rural borough in Southern Bogota...
Another issue necessary to consider at comparing geographic diversity is how wide or specific a ‘geographic trait’ is.
For instance, glaciers… both Colombia and Chile have glaciers, throughout its territory north to South in a distance equal to . All Colombian glaciers are smallish, located on slopy surfaces around the top of high mountains. Chile has glaciers like this in the north too, but it also has huge, low-lying glaciers that gently flow from the Patagonian and Fuegian ice fields to the sea.
So, is it fair to say that they on par in this department? I don’t think so; it’s pretty much like saying that as both Colombia and Chile have hummingbirds, they are equal on this regard.
Not equal but there's a representation of it across its territory north to south in an equivalent span from Hamburg to Montpellier. Whereas Chile has absolutely no representation of a Tropical Savana, a Tropical Rainforest, Coral sands, reefs/beaches, immense Caribbean wetlands/bayou, mangrove or anything in the vast variety of Tropical biomes.
Colombia on the other hand whilst not on equal footing in glaciers at least has several and this makes it even more remarkable considering everything else it has.
Last edited by Pueblofuerte; 10-10-2019 at 05:36 PM..
Let’s take Peru. The country has tropical rainforests east of the Andes, whereas the coasts are very mild and dry due to the cold Humboldt Current and the Pacific anticyclone. Quite unique in its own terms. The Andes work as a barrier between two contrasting realms. On one side, the hot Sechura desert, the foggy and coolish Peruvian desert, the rather dry monsoonal Andean plateau, and the warmer Subandean dry lands in between. East of the Andes peaks, there are the Yungas forests, the Amazon rainforest and the Savannahs of Pampas del Heath area*.
The Eastern side has the typical tropical Latin American biota that thrives from Yucatan to Northern Argentina, including the animals already mentioned. The Western side has the typical fauna that radiates from the Dry/temperate South America, including colonies of penguins, sea lions and the bunch of sea birds associated to these environments, camelids, mountain viscachas, Taruca deer, rheas, Andean and Pampas cats, etc.; but no tapirs, peccaries, capybaras, jaguars, leopardine cats, etc.
The Eastern side must account for more than 95% of Peru’s biodiversity, yet the Western side includes its own different biomes with their own biota. Colombia completely lacks this biota (at least natively), which shows strong evidence of lacking a complete mosaic of biomes. It only has some transitional areas in which the most adaptable species of this assemblage manage to marginally appear, notoriously the Nudo de los Pastos paramo area, where some typical southern animals live, such as the Culpeo Fox (Lycalopex culpaeus).
Eastern Peru is more similar to the whole of Colombia than the western side. Western Peru is more similar to Patagonia than the Eastern side of the country. Peru is split up by the Andes into the two main biogeographic realms of South America. Only Bolivia and Argentina have it too**.
So, is Peru geographically diverse? Yes, definitely!
Is Colombia geographically diverse? Of course it is!
Is Colombia more geographically diverse than Peru? Not sure, but I wouldn’t bet on this. I’d put my two cents on Peru.
* Yes, Peru has tropical savannah too, and this is the only part of the country in which the marsh deer (Blastocerus dichotomus) and the maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus) can be found, charismatic components of the tropical and subtropical savannahs and wetlands south of the Amazon rainforest.
** It’s not casual that Peru, Bolivia and Argentina have the largest diversity among Ungulates and mid-to-large carnivore mammals in South America, as these are animals that usually cover wide geographic ranges and thus unlikely to be exposed to significant speciation. They have both the ‘wet-tropical’ and the ‘dry-temperate’ biota.
Colombia is a country where all types of flora and fauna thrive. An example of this is how well invasive wild hippopotamus have taken to the marshlands of Colombia. Colombia's geography left to its own devices (without human destruction) can sustain a huge array of species from across the globe, a lot has to do with migratory patterns and climatic variances over the millennia that have prevented colonies to take hold..introduced Andean camelids do fine in the Cundi-Boyacense plateau. The now extinct Sea Wolf (Caribbean Monk Seal) once roamed the entire Caribbean and Southern US, the last worldwide sightings was in Colombia in the 1950's, in many cases Colombia has been the last bastion of Atlantic Ocean biota that are now sadly extinct. Peru has nothing like the hugely diverse Caribbean biogeographical region with iconic Corals (the 2nd and 3rd largest reefs in the world), an array of coral marine species, oceanic manitees and alike. Colombia has what's frequently referred to two of the best diving spots in the world and both UNESCO natural heritage sites/reserves, Peru doesn't have a mid-ocean ridge creating an extremely diverse seafloor mountain system with some of the greatest schools of marine life in the world.
Peru is of course diverse with a variety of habitat within its 3 main geographical entities Pacific, Andes and Amazon. Pampas del Heath is part of the Amazon river basin, though this is not to detract from its Tropical Savannah micro-biome its far more heavily integrated into the Amazon as is most of the area around Puerto Maldonado.
This is completely different from the vast Llanos of Colombia which are larger than the country of Germany. As part of the Orinoco River basin (the 3rd largest river in the world) and a Global 200 biome, it's substantially separate from the Amazon realm.
Last edited by Pueblofuerte; 10-14-2019 at 04:17 PM..
Probably USA though it's lop sided and lacks true tropical biomes (China also but less lop sided), followed by China then Colombia, India would come 4th, followed by Peru. That would round of my top 5.
The remaining top 10 would be fought out by Mexico, Argentina, South Africa, Japan and possibly Australia. Although Kenya, Indonesia and Pakistan will be contenders also.
Last edited by Pueblofuerte; 10-17-2019 at 03:48 AM..
No, Colombia is unique for the very reasons I've stated and that you fail to accept when it's more than clear to see.
Argentina may have an equivalent to the Llanos in the form of wetlands but Peru and Ecuador do not. Ecuador doesn't have deserts, Peru doesn't have tropical coastal biomes, Argentina less so - anything tropical for that matter, whereas Colombia does have glacial habitat not only glacial habitat but forests that resemble sub-tropical forests in latitudes further afield. That's the diverse span which makes it unique which other countries simply don't have.
I'm assuming you're discounting the Paramo forests when you say no snowy forests in Colombia then?
Also do you think when it snows it just stops at the mountain snowline? Well no, it doesn't and even gets frosty and misty in places as low as Bogota, so what do you think happens a few hundred metres up at the 3k line or a kilometre up like at the 3.5k line or a whole mile up like at the 4k line? Do you really think those forests get no snow ever? Sure its infrequent, maybe only twice maybe three times a year but oh yes forests get snowy and by the by if we're getting technical as you seem to be, that's more a climatic condition than a geographic one.
Paramo forest is an oxymoron. It’s either a paramo or a forest. This picture shows a paramo environment, not a forest. Vegetation is pretty much the expected one for a high altitude wet Andean shrubland, as the ones you can find from western Venezuela to northwestern Argentina, and not precisely something analog to the Valdivian rainforest or the Araucaria forests.
Snow below 4000 m is a total rarity in Colombia, for instance the 2018 snowfall across Paramo de las Tinajas was incredibly rare, a one in many decades event, so don’t tell me that some forests get a couple of yearly snowfalls, they don’t. Occurrence of rain and snow mixed or soft hail (often confused with snow in places where snow is rare or unheard) is more common a bit below. Rime is also more frequent and sometimes confused with snow. For instance, the alleged Sao Paulo snowfall in 1918 was in fact frozen fog. But proper snow is even more restricted. Then again, the eventual occurrence of an extraordinary phenomenon like snow in a tropical highland forest doesn’t change its: it won’t have the seasonal development and therefore the ecologic features of a “snowy” forest.
Issue is that Colombia lacks any subtropical/temperate based biome, because it lacks latitudinal development.
You insist on equating or matching altitudinal development with latitudinal development, it doesn’t work this way. It’s just the basic school stuff to claim “oh, look at this, we have all the climates”, without going beyond. The only thing they have in common is the existence of a gradient in the average temperature. Topography, climate, and therefore biomes, are different. Hence, the geographic traits that make up this imprecise concept of “geographic diversity” are specific and different in both scopes (at this point, discussing a way to quantify it would be good).
For instance, tropical areas can’t have snowy forests because they lack thermal seasonality, so the tree line is below the line of regular occurrence of snowfall, which in tropical regions lie within the paramo/periglaciar zone. So the temperate forests, be them coniferous, broadleaf, mixed or deciduous, don’t exist in the tropical highlands, and so on… but, but, how is this possible, as altitude replaces latitude? Well, it doesn’t! Altitude provides a world, latitude provides another world. Altitude development + Latitude development is the perfect match for an authentically super-diverse region, as long as you avoid being in the western side of the tropics (oh, Chile).
PS: Ecuador has deserts too, in the extreme southwest (Sechura area). Some places in the Galapagos Islands are also definitely dry.
PS2: Colombia lacks coastal areas with average temperatures below 25°C, not a great performance in this aspect, yet expected from a tropical area.
^^
You really have no idea about the northern half of South America do you? It's more than obvious that you've never been to that part of the world, I doubt you've even been to el NOA.
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Colombia
