Definition
noun
A biogeographic realm that covers South America, Central America, and the Caribbean
Supplement
Biogeographic realms are large spatial regions of the Earth’s land surface. Studying biogeographic realms leads to insight especially on biodiversity. It provides understanding on the extent of biodiversity and the factors that affect it. At present, there are about eight realms recognized by the World Wildlife Fund and they are divided according to their ecosystems sharing similar biological evolutionary history and distributional patterns of terrestrial organisms. The eight biogeographic realms are Nearctic realm, Palaearctic realm, Neotropical realm, Afrotropic realm, Indomalayan realm, Australasia realm, Oceanian realm, and Antarctic realm.
The Neotropic realm (about 19.0 million square kilometres) includes the tropical terrestrial ecological regions of South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. It includes tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests more than the other biogeographic realms.1 The Amazon Rainforest is also included in the Neotropic realm and is just a part of the Amazonia bioregion of the Neotropic. The rainforest stretches from the Andes mountains to the Atlantic Ocean. Another major bioregion in the Neotropic is the Orinico. It is a region of humid forested broadleaf forest and wetland.1
See also:
Reference(s):
1 Neotropic realm. Retrieved from ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neotropical-realm.
