The pine rocklands are a critically imperiled ecosystem located in southern Florida, the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos Islands, and Cuba. Its location in south Florida and throughout the Caribbean Archipelago straddles the southern and northern ends of the temperate and tropical flora ranges, respectively.[4] This helps explain why the pine rocklands are home to a wide variety of plants and animals, many of which are endemic to Florida, south Florida, or the pine rockland itself.[5] It is characterized by an open canopy of South Florida slash pine (Pinus elliotti var. densa), a patchy subcanopy of palms and shrubs, and an extremely diverse herbaceous layer, growing atop Miami oolitic limestone.[5] Historically, the landscape was maintained by frequent low-intensity fires, but urbanization, agricultural expansion, exotic invasion and fragmentation have led to fire suppression and severe changes in plant community composition.[6]