About this site
Providing tropical forest news, statistics, photos, and information, rainforests.mongabay.com is the world's most popular rainforest site. [more]
Weekly Newsletter
Mongabay will never distribute your email address or send spam.
The canopy raft study is recounted by Hallè, F., "A Raft Atop the Rain Forest," National Geographic, October 1990.
In Tropical Nature, (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, Macmillan Publishing Company, 1984) Forsyth, A. and Miyata, K. provide information on epiphyte and liana growth on canopy trees.
Ashton, P.S., Givnish, T.J., and Appanah, S. ("Staggered Flowering in the Dipterocarpaceae: New Insights into Floral Induction and the Evolution of Mast Fruiting in the Aseasonal Tropics," The American Naturalist, Vol. 132, No. 1, July 1988) discuss mast flowering of Dipterocarps. They note the correlation between these flowerings and drought/el Niño events and describe pollination by small insects known as thirps.
Robbins, R.K. and Opler, P.A., in "Butterfly Diversity and a Preliminary Comparison with Bird and Mammal Diversity," p 69-75 in Biodiversity II. Reaka-Kudla, Wilson, Wilson, eds., Joseph Henry Press, Washington D. C. 1997, are the source for the number of butterfly species.
M. Goulding describes moth pollination of the Piranha tree and beetle pollination of Annona in the Amazon (Amazon-The Flooded Forest, New York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc 1990).
Beetle diversity is noted in Hammond, P., "Species Inventory." in Groombridge, B. ed., Global Biodiversity: Status of the Earth's Living Resources, London: Chapman and Hall, 1992.
Attenborough, D. (The Private Life Of Plants, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1995) describes orchid reproductive strategies for the bucket orchid and dancing lady orchid of the New World.
Falkenmark, M. and Lindh, G. (Water for a Starving World, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1976) identify the study near Manaus which measured nutrient load in rainfall.
Forsyth, A. and Miyata, K. (Tropical Nature, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, Macmillan Publishing Company, 1984) discuss the strangler fig, including its reproduction. They also note that large woody lianas can exceed 3000 feet in length.
Putz, F.E. in "Lianas vs. Trees," Biotropica 12: 224-225, 1980, suggests that it may be advantageous for trees to sway out of phase from their neighbors to reduce the growth of lianas. She notes that some lianas have adapted to this defense mechanism.
Myers, N., ed., Rainforests: The Illustrated Library of the Earth. Rodale Press: Emmaus, Pennsylvania, 1993, describes common paths in the canopy which often lead to fruiting trees.
In One River (New York: Touchstone, 1996) W. Davis demonstrates the uniqueness of rainforest relationships in his description of the sloth descending from the canopy to defecate.
MacKinnon, J. ("The behavior and ecology of wild orang-utans," Animal Behavior, Vol. 22, No. 1. 1974); MacKinnon, J. (The Ape Within Us, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1978); and Quammen, D. ("The Lone Ape," from The Flight of the Iguana, New York: Touchstone 1988) examine the behavior and characteristics of Orang-utans including the idea that unsociable behavior among members of this species is not innate.
The Muriqui census is given in Quammen, D. (The Song of the Dodo, New York: Scribner, 1996) and Kierulff, M. C. ("Avalição das populações selvagens de mico-leão-dourado, Leontopitheceus rosalia, e proposta de estratégia para sua conservação," unpublished M.Sc. thesis, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Minas Gerais, Brazil, 1993, in Biodiversity II. Reaka-Kudla, Wilson, Wilson, eds., Joseph Henry Press, Washington D. C. 1997).
The importance of bats as pollinators in the South Pacific is discussed in Cox, P., Elmquist, T., Pierson, E., Rainey, W., "Flying foxes as strong interactors in South Pacific island ecosystems: A conservation hypothesis," Conservation Biology 5: 448-454.; and Fujita, M.S. and M.D. Tuttle, "Flying Foxes: Threatened animals of key ecological and economic importance," Conservation Biology 5: 455-463, 1991.
Bat Conservation International provides some background information of bats in general including breeding habits. Quammen, D., in "Wool of Bat" (from Natural Acts New York: Avon Books, 1985) notes the proposal of constructing bat roosts to keep mosquitoes in check.
In The Song of the Dodo (New York: Scribner, 1996) Quammen, D. provides a very readable account of the survival of lemurs on Madagascar and some Strepsirhines in scattered places.
D. Adams and M. Carwardine in Last Chance to See (New York: Harmony Books, 1991) comically describe the appearance and behavior of the aye-aye. G. Durrell devotes a chapter in The Aye-Aye and I (New York: Arcade Publishing 1993) to the aye-aye.
Jolly, A. ("The Naturalists' Promised Land," A World Out of Time-Madagascar, New York: Aperture Foundation, Inc., 1990) notes the high cyanide tolerance of the golden bamboo lemur.
D. Quammen uses the term "ecologically naive" in The Song of the Dodo (New York: Scribner, 1996) to describe species that have been isolated from predators and lack the instinct to fear man.
Kleiman, D.G. and Mallinson, J.J.C., in "Recovery and management committees for lion tamarins: partnerships in conservation biology," Conservation Biology Vol. 13 No. 1 (85-97), Feb 1999., describe how the lion tamarin has become a flagship species for the conservation of Brazil's Atlantic forest.
An estimate of the number of bird species in the world is found in Groombridge, B. ed., Global Biodiversity: Status of the Earth's Living Resources, London: Chapman and Hall, 1992.
Background and updates on Spix's macaw can be found in "Lone Macaw Makes a Vain Bid for Survival," New Scientist, 8/18/90; E.O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1992; Epstein, J., "The World's Rarest Bird," San Francisco Chronicle, 10-7-99.
The conservation effort for saving the Mauritius kestrel is discussed in literature by the Peregrine Falcon Fund 1996, D. Adams and M. Carwardine in Last Chance to See (New York: Harmony Books, 1991), and Quammen, D. (The Song of the Dodo, New York: Scribner, 1996).
The box on "Virtuous Mosquitoes" comes from Quammen, David. "Sympathy for the Devil." from Natural Acts. Avon Books, New York, 1985.
Mantid hearing is reviewed in Brett, R., "Preying Mantids: Hiding in Plain Sight," Discover Magazine, California Academy of Sciences, Spring 1997.
The diversity and abundance of insects in the canopy is revealed by Erwin, T. L. in "Biodiversity at its Utmost: Tropical Forest Beetles," Biodiversity II, Reaka-Kudla, Wilson, Wilson, eds. Joseph Henry Press, Washington D. C. 1997 and "Tropical Forests: Their Richness in Coleoptera and other arthropod species," Coleopterists Bulletin 36:74-75, 1982.
"Rainforest" is used interchangeably with "rain forest" on this site. "Jungle" is generally not used.
Recent news
Beef consumption fuels rainforest destruction (02/16/2009)
Nearly 80 percent of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon results from cattle ranching, according to a new report by Greenpeace. The finding confirms what Amazon researchers have long known – that Brazil's rise to become the world's largest exporter of beef has come at the expense of Earth's biggest rainforest.
How to save the Amazon rainforest (01/04/2009)
Environmentalists have long voiced concern over the vanishing Amazon rainforest, but they haven't been particularly effective at slowing forest loss. In fact, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars in donor funds that have flowed into the region since 2000 and the establishment of more than 100 million hectares of protected areas since 2002, average annual deforestation rates have increased since the 1990s, peaking at 73,785 square kilometers (28,488 square miles) of forest loss between 2002 and 2004. With land prices fast appreciating, cattle ranching and industrial soy farms expanding, and billions of dollars' worth of new infrastructure projects in the works, development pressure on the Amazon is expected to accelerate. Given these trends, it is apparent that conservation efforts alone will not determine the fate of the Amazon or other rainforests. Some argue that market measures, which value forests for the ecosystem services they provide as well as reward developers for environmental performance, will be the key to saving the Amazon from large-scale destruction. In the end it may be the very markets currently driving deforestation that save forests.
Amazon rainforest damage surges 67% in 2008 (12/20/2008)
The area of rainforest in the process of being deforested — razed but not yet cleared — surged in the Brazilian Amazon during 2008, according to new figures released by Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE). The announcement comes shortly after the Brazilian government reported a 4 percent increase in forest clearing for the year. Using an advanced satellite system that tracks changes in vegetation cover INPE found that 24,932 square kilometers of Amazon forest was damaged between August 2007 and July 2008, an increase of 10,017 square kilometers -- 67 percent -- over the prior year.
Cutting deforestation can fight climate change, reduce poverty and conflict (09/24/2008)
Forest conservation can play a critical role in efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and alleviate poverty, said a prominent group of politicians, development experts, and environmental NGOs meeting in New York City to discuss U.S. climate policy.
Future threats to the Amazon rainforest (07/31/2008)
Between June 2000 and June 2008, more than 150,000 square kilometers of rainforest were cleared in the Brazilian Amazon. While deforestation rates have slowed since 2004, forest loss is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. This is a look at past, current and potential future drivers of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.
