ABSTRACT
Central America is situated between the Nearctic and the Neotropical biogeographic realms, which have produced conditions for relatively high levels of biological diversity, with important ecoregions, ecosystems, endemism, and species richness. The Central America region comprises El Salvador, Belize, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama, and it has been identified as part of one of the planet’s richest and most highly threatened biodiversity regions, making it one of the world’s top 25 biodiversity conservation hot spots. Considering species diversity and endemism, Central America is the world’s second ranking priority hot spot in terms of plant and animal endemism, and fifth among all hot spots (Myers et al. 2000; Conservation International 2011). This chapter describes the terrestrial ecoregions of Central America and its
nested biomes based on the analysis framework proposed by Dinerstein et al. (1995) for setting priorities of conservation. Ecoregions provide a conceptual framework for the identification of representative habitats and serves as a tool to compare areas with different biodiversity features, status of their natural habitats and degree of protection (Olson et al. 2001). The description of their biotic characteristics, landscape context, main threats to loss of biodiversity and degradation caused by human activities and conservation status is based on the available literature but also on spatial analysis at regional scale.
