Animal life
Biologists have recorded 237 species of birds, 64
species of mammals, 46 species of reptiles and 20 species of frogs in the
national park. Large mammals such as gibbons and sun bear are absent or very rare due to the small size of the
forest and illegal hunting. The park's invertebrates include the
Rajah Brooke's Birdwing butterfly (Trogonoptera brookiana) and more than 300 species of ants. Leeches are rare
Plant life
In 1991, the Sarawak
Forest Department, Center for Tropical Forest Science/Harvard University, and
the Plant Ecology Laboratory of Osaka City University, Japan created the Lambir
Hills Forest Dynamics Plot. This is a 52-hectare (130-acre) area of the forest
in which all trees thicker than 1.5cm at breast height have been measured,
mapped and identified. Every few years, researchers do a census of these trees
so they can track their growth and changes in the population structure of each
species. A census of all trees in the plot found 1175 different
species. This gives Lambir Hills National Park possibly the highest
diversity of trees of any forest in the Old World.The dominant family of trees
in the park is the Dipterocarpaceae, whose members include Shorea and Dryobalanops species. As Lambir Hills National Park is the last
intact patch of lowland dipterocarp forest left in Sarawak it is an important
refuge for species that have been heavily logged elsewhere.Among the tallest
trees in the national park is the tapang (Koompassia excelsa), which can grow more than 80 metres tall, and which honey
bees like to build their hives on.Other interesting plants in the park include
several species of Macaranga that
have formed a symbiotic relationship with ants. The ants live inside the
plants' hollow stems and protect them from herbivorous insects.The park also
has a very high diversity of figs (Ficus species), with nearly 80
species.
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