LETTER TO THE EDITOR Worldwide destruction of inselbergs and related rock outcrops threatens a unique ecosystem Stefan Porembski 1 • Fernando A. O. Silveira 2 • Peggy L. Fiedler 3 • Aparna Watve 4 • Marina Rabarimanarivo 5 • Francois Kouame 6 • Stephen D. Hopper 7 Received: 12 May 2016 / Revised: 8 June 2016 / Accepted: 20 June 2016 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016 In many parts of the world rock outcrops form important landscape elements that play a role in generating and maintaining biodiversity in addition to providing key ecosystem services. These rock outcrops rise abruptly from the surrounding landscape, have a patchy distribution, and represent centers of diversity and endemism for both animal and plant life (Hopper and Withers 1997). Known as ‘inselbergs’ and often composed of Precambrian granitoids, these outcrops occur across all continents. Inselbergs are particularly noteworthy in ancient biodiversity hotspots, e.g., the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, Guinean Forests of West Africa, Madagascar, the Greater Cape and Southwest Australian Floristic regions (Hopper et al. 2016). The ecological and evolutionary processes that operate in these ancient environments differ significantly from comparatively more recent envi- ronments (Hopper 2009). Their conservation is of global importance, in great part because they support unique, endemic biota of recent and deep phylogenetic history. Communicated by David Hawksworth. & Fernando A. O. Silveira faosilveira@icb.ufmg.br 1 Institut fu ¨r Biowissenschaften, Allgemeine und Spezielle Botanik, Universita ¨t Rostock, Wismarsche Str. 8, 18051 Rostock, Germany 2 Departamento de Bota ˆnica, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Av. Anto ˆnio Carlos, 6627, Belo Horizonte, MG 31270-901, Brazil 3 Natural Reserve System, University of California, Office of the President, 1111 Franklin Street, Oakland, CA 94607, USA 4 School of Rural Development, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Apshinga Road, Tuljapur, Osmanabad Dt, 413 601 Guwahati, India 5 Missouri Botanical Garden, B.P. 3391, 101 Antananarivo, Madagascar 6 African Centre of Excellence on Climate Change, Biodiversity and Sustainable Agriculture, University Fe ´lix Houphouet Boigny, Abidjan, Co ˆte d’Ivoire 7 CENRM and School of Plant Biology, The University of Western Australia, Albany, WA 6330, Australia 123 Biodivers Conserv DOI 10.1007/s10531-016-1171-1