Describe at least two communities that live in the tropical rainforest. Make sure to include the populations, hierarchy, and adaptations necessary to live in their ecosystem.
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Tropical rainforests are distinguished not only by a remarkable richness of biota but also by the complexity of the interrelationships of all the plant and animal inhabitants that have been evolving together throughout many millions of years. As in all ecosystems, but particularly in the complex tropical rainforest community, the removal of one species threatens the survival of others with which it interacts. Some interactions are mentioned below, but many have yet to be revealed.
General structure of the rainforest
Plants with similar stature and life-form can be grouped into categories called synusiae, which make up distinct layers of vegetation. In tropical rainforests the synusiae are more numerous than in other ecosystem types. They include not only mechanically independent forms, whose stems are self-supporting, and saprophytic plants but also mechanically dependent synusiae such as climbers, stranglers, epiphytes, and parasitic plants. An unusual mix of trees of different sizes is found in the tropical rainforest, and those trees form several canopies below the uppermost layer, although they are not always recognizably separate layers. The upper canopy of the tropical rainforest is typically greater than 40 metres above ground.
North America
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North America: The tropical rainforest
Tropical rainforests provide a dense covering of all windward slopes in southern Mexico and Central America. The forests consist of such...
The tropical rainforest is structurally very complex. Its varied vegetation illustrates the intense competition for light that goes on in this environment in which other climatic factors are not limiting at any time of year and the vegetation is thus allowed to achieve an unequaled luxuriance and biomass. The amount of sunlight filtering through the many layers of foliage in a tropical rainforest is small; only about 1 percent of the light received at the top of the canopy reaches the ground. Most plants depend on light for their energy requirements, converting it into chemical energy in the form of carbohydrates by the process of photosynthesis in their chlorophyll-containing green tissues. Few plants can persist in the gloomy environment at ground level, and the surface is marked by a layer of rapidly decomposing dead leaves rather than of small herbaceous plants. Mosses grow on tree butts, and there are a few forbs such as ferns and gingers, but generally the ground is bare of living plants, and even shrubs are rare. However, tree seedlings and saplings are abundant; their straight stems reach toward the light but receive too little energy to grow tall enough before food reserves from their seeds are exhausted. Their chance to grow into maturity comes only if overhanging vegetation is at least partially removed through tree death or damage by wind. Such an occurrence permits more solar radiation to reach their level and initiates rapid growth and competition between saplings as to which will become a part of the well-lit canopy.
tropical rainforest
tropical rainforest