Peruvian Yungas

The Peruvian Yungas comprise a tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forest ecoregion in Peru.

History

During the Inca Empire, the term yunga referred to both the western and eastern slopes of the Andes and their inhabitants. In the Spanish colonial era, it became primarily associated with the western foothills near the desert coast and the local Indians. Today, yunga can refer to the lower slopes on both sides of the Andes, though yungas mostly denotes the eastern foothills between the Andes and the Amazon basin, with both having mostly lost their ethnic associations.

Setting

The Yungas are found on the eastern slopes and valleys of the Peruvian Andes. They form a transition zone between the Southwest Amazon moist forests and Ucayali moist forests at lower elevations to the east and the Central Andean puna and wet puna at higher elevations to the west.

Climate

The climate in this ecoregion varies from a tropical rainforest climate in the north to a subtropical highland climate in the south. Precipitation ranges from per year.

Flora

This ecoregion contains over 3,000 species of plants, including 200 species of orchids. Orchid genera include Epidendrum and Maxillaria. Tree ferns and bamboo are common. Below, the forest includes species such as cedar, trumpet tree, and relatives of papaya. Above, there are scrublands and wet rocky thickets with shrubs and land orchids as well as forests of Podocarpus conifers.

Fauna

This ecoregion contains over 200 species of vertebrates. The gallito de las rocas is endemic.
Notable mammals include the shrew opossums and Kalinowski's Agouti, as well as the northern pudú and the hairy long-nosed armadillo.
Notable species with limited distributions found here include the horned curassow, hummingbirds, the long-whiskered owlet and the Marañón poison frog.
Endangered and threatened species include the yellow-tailed woolly monkey, jaguar, ocelot, spectacled bear, neotropical otter, colocolo, Andean cock-of-the-rock and cinchona.
This ecoregions also has endemic species of butterflies from the genera Dismopha, Callithea, Paridos, and Morpho.