Biogeography and Ecology of the Rain Forests of Eastern AfricaEastern African rain forests are remarkable in their high level of endemism. Miocene uplift of the central African plateau separated these montane and coastal forests from the main Guineo Congolian forest of west and central Africa. Since then, stable Indian Ocean temperatures maintained a region of high rainfall throughout Pleistocene droughts that devastated forest elsewhere on the continent. Relics of the former Pan African rain forest survived