Venezuela lies within the Neotropic

Venezuela lies within the Neotropic ecozone; large portions of the country were originally covered by moist broadleaf forests. One of 17 megadiverse countries,[88] Venezuela's habitats range from the Andes Mountains in the west to the Amazon Basin rainforest in the south, via extensive llanos plains and Caribbean coast in the center and the Orinoco River Delta in the east. They include xeric scrublands in the extreme northwest and coastal mangrove forests in the northeast.[48] Its cloud forests and lowland rainforests are particularly rich.[89]

Animals of Venezuela are diverse and include manatees, three-toed sloth, two-toed sloth, Amazon river dolphins, and Orinoco crocodiles, which have been reported to reach up to 6.6 m (22 ft) in length. Venezuela hosts a total of 1,417 bird species, 48 of which are endemic.[90] Important birds include ibises, ospreys, kingfishers,[89] and the yellow-orange Venezuelan troupial, the national bird. Notable mammals include the giant anteater, jaguar, and the capybara, the world's largest rodent. More than half of Venezuelan avian and mammalian species are found in the Amazonian forests south of the Orinoco.[91]


The araguaney (Tabebuia chrysantha), Venezuela's national tree.
For the fungi, an account was provided by R.W.G. Dennis[92] which has been digitized and the records made available on-line as part of the Cybertruffle Robigalia database.[93] That database includes nearly 3,900 species of fungi recorded from Venezuela, but is far from complete, and the true total number of fungal species already known from Venezuela is likely higher, given the generally accepted estimate that only about 7% of all fungi worldwide have so far been discovered.[94]

Among plants of Venezuela, over 25,000 species of orchids are found in the country's cloud forest and lowland rainforest ecosystems.[89] These include the flor de mayo orchid (Cattleya mossiae), the national flower. Venezuela's national tree is the araguaney, whose characteristic lushness after the rainy season led novelist Rómulo Gallegos to name it "[[l]a primavera de oro de los araguaneyes" (the golden spring of the araguaneyes).

Venezuela is among the top 20 countries in terms of endemism.[95] Among its animals, 23% of reptilian and 50% of amphibian species are endemic.[95] Although the available information is still very small, a first effort has been made to estimate the number of fungal species endemic to Venezuela: 1334 species of fungi have been tentatively identified as possible endemics of the country.[96] Some 38% of the over 21,000 plant species known from Venezuela are unique to the country.[95]