TROPICAL NATURE: Life and Death in the Rain Forests of Central and South America

by Adrian & Ken Miyata Forsyth ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1984

One of two splendid but very different explorations of the staggering richness of the tropical forests (see Myers, below)--which could profitably be read in sequence, beginning with this slighter and more deftly written volume. Tropical biologists Forsyth and Miyata approach their complex subject by a gentle piecemeal strategy, using the oddities of particular organisms to convey the outlines of rain-forest ecology. Focusing mainly on the lowland rain forests of Costa Pica and the Ecuadorean Amazon basin, they gracefully discuss the many biological miracles by which the shaded tropical soil--almost completely bare of nutrients by temperate-zone standards--can continue to support the huge biomass of the tropical trees, their many epiphytes and climbing vines, a vast proportion of the world's bird and insect life, and the riot of plant and animal life on the forest's sunlit canopy. It's a place where available nutrients (in the form of, e.g., feces) are snatched up by competing processors within a matter of days or minutes; where hundreds of different tree species may coexist within a few square miles, each represented by only a single individual; where pollinating strategies to overcome the problem of sparse species distribution take such forms as flowers that mimic the shape or smell of a pollinating insect's preferred diet. In corroboration of the truism that the tropics are virtually a laboratory for the observation of symbiotic and antibiotic relationships, Forsyth and Miyata describe a tropical acacia that secretes nonfloral nectar for the specific use of the ants that clear competing undergrowth and destroy leaf-eating insects; a cowbird species whose changeling young actually benefit the rightful nestlings by fending off wasps; the ordeal of a student friend who spent some weeks as the hapless host of a tropical botfly maggot--""inside a food chain, rather than at its end."" They conclude with a plea for conservation of this rapidly vanishing global resource, and an appendix of practical suggestions for would-be-visitors. Popular natural history in the best lightweight tradition.

Pub Date: May 1, 1984

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Scribners

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1984

Categories: NONFICTION