The Tropical Rainforest

Asurne JohnsonAndrew HenrySamatha Baldrick Emily Laugle (emilylaugle@yahoo.com)

Location, Location, Location

The tropical rainforests of North America are located on the southern tip in elevations below 3000 feet.

Countries that have rainforests include, Mexico, Cuba, and Costa Rica, Belize, and Panama

Climatic Conditions

The average temperatures is over, or about 77 degrees Fahrenheit. Due to consistent

temperatures, there are no particular seasons

Climate and Rainfall

There is about 100 inches of rain per year.

There is a wet and dry season, but the dry season is very short lived.

Rainforest Soil

The rainforest has very thin and nutrient-poor layer of topsoil over a layer of clay that plants cannot penetrate. The layer of topsoil is 3-4 inches.

Once soil is damaged it takes many years to recover, however, the soil is not very prone to damage because of consistent conditions.

The soil is very thin due to the huge amount of plant life it has to support. This also is the cause of the lack of nutrients.

Dominant Plant Life

Trees dominate the rainforest. Mahogany: Mahogany trees are large, dark

wood trees that occupy the canopy of tropical rainforests. They grow up to about 150 feet tall and can be about 6 inches in diameter that sits on a large, basal buttress.

Rosewood: It is a deep purple streaked with golden yellow to black. It is oily and fragrant. In North America, rosewood is found in a very remote area of Florida.

What Some Dominant Trees Look Like

Mahogany Rosewood

Lianas

Lianas- (typically deciduous) woody vines that grow rapidly up the trunks of trees when there is a gap in the canopy.

Epiphytes

Epiphytes are plants that grow on other plants like parasites, but unlike parasites, they do not take anything such as nutrients.

There are well over 15000 epiphytes in the neotropical realm.

They are most abundant in cloud forests. Examples include:

Ferns Lichens Mosses Orchids

Lianas Epiphytes

Adaptations of Plants

Drip tips- Slender, elongated tips on the leaves of plants to lead water off of the leaf. It allows plants to limit their intake of water because there is already so much water in the atmosphere.

Buttresses are large appendages that spring from the base of the trunks of trees. They provide extra support for the large trees, seeing as the soil is too shallow for typical roots. Without this support, the trees would fall over.

Animals of the Tropical Rainforest and Their Adaptations

Spider Monkey- Spider monkeys have long limbs and a prehensile tail that enable them to move from branch to branch, or tree to tree.

Gaudy Leaf Frog– Though the male Gaudy Leaf Frog needs brightly colored toes and eyes to attract a mate, it needs to be camouflaged to avoid being eaten. By sitting on its hands and feet, it is able to hide and look like merely a leaf.

Toucan—The Toucan has a large bill which enables it to pull fruit from trees. Its bright coloring allows it to attract mates in an environment dominated by green coloring.

Animals of the Rainforest

Gaudy Leaf Frog Spider Monkey

Layers of The Tropical Rainforest

A layer: the emergents. Widely spaced trees 100 to 120 feet tall and with umbrella-shaped canopies extend above the general canopy of the forest. Since they must contend with drying winds, they tend to have small leaves and some species are deci duous during the brief dry season.

B layer: a closed canopy of 80 foot trees. Light is readily available at the top of this layer, but greatly reduced below it.

C layer: a closed canopy of 60 foot trees. There is little air movement in this zone and consequently humidity is constantly high.

Shrub/sapling layer: Less than 3 percent of the light intercepted at the top of the forest canopy passes to this layer. Arrested growth is characteristic of young trees capable of a rapid surge of growth when a gap in canopy above them opens.

Ground layer: sparse plant growth. Less than 1 percent of the light that strikes the top of the forest penetrates to the forest floor. In such darkness few green plants grow. Moisture is also reduced by the canopy above: one third of the precipitation is intercepted before it reaches the ground.