Chapter summary
There are many different plant and animal species in a rainforest, but the trees define the way a rainforest looks.
Plants and animals are important because they are a part of the system that makes the rainforest work.
Rainforests are a very important part of the earth's environment, so
the plants and animals in a rainforest's ecosystem are also important.
The Amazon rainforest, the biggest rainforest in the world, is home to one-third of all the species in the world.
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Species such as the guady leaf tree frog can only be found in Costa Rica
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Animals
Many different plant and animal species thrive in the rainforest
environment, but it is the trees that define the way we see the
rainforest. From the air, a rainforest looks like an enormous, green
carpet. The canopy very rarely breaks, with no gaps between the trees.
Beneath these trees, there are thousands of different types of plants.
Living amongst the trees, vines, shrubs, ferns, and mosses are many
different types of animals. These range from the smallest ant to the
carnivorous (meat-eating) cats that roam the forest floor. The more animals and plants we lose, the fewer there are to contribute
to individual ecosystems.
The more individual ecosystems are damaged,
the greater the negative effects to the Earth's environment as a whole. Each plant and animal in the rainforest brings
something to the rainforest environment that another plant or animal
will rely on. This creates a balance of life in the rainforest that
includes all living things.
In this delicate balance, both the plant
and animal species inhabit different layers of the rainforest. There is
no dominant species in a tropical rainforest. This factor contributes
to the extraordinary biodiversity that exists and prevents one species
from taking over.
The Amazon
The Amazon rainforest contains one-third of all
the species in the world. This makes the rainforest the most precious
biological area in the world. Without the Amazon Rainforest, the
habitat of all those species that rely on it would be lost. Among other
things, the Amazon is the home of the endangered jaguar and
approximately 1200 species of butterfly. One-fifth of the world's bird
population lives in the Amazon rainforest.
Plants and animals are important because they
contribute, even if in a very small way, something of value to
something else. Each living organism is part of a balance within its
ecosystem. The plants and animals of the rainforest are very important
for several reasons.
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| A rainforest in Costa Rica
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The survival of the rainforest is extremely
important to the Earth due to the functions that it performs. The
animals and plants are important to the rainforest as they contribute
to the way it works, without them there would be no rainforest
ecosystem. Many of the plants and animals in the rainforest are endemic
to it, which means that they are unique to their area.Because endemic
species live in a specific area they can become more easily extinct,
which means that they no longer exist.
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