Madagascar is the hottest of biodiversity hot spots. The island is home to approximately five percent of all the species on earth. Four out of five of them are found nowhere else, including dozens of species of tenrecs and lemurs that have evolved over tens of millions of years. "It's been isolated from the rest of the world for 88 million years, so most of the plants and animals that are there washed ashore accidentally over time," says Anne Yoder, professor of biology and evolutionary