Seventeen marvelous essays introducing the habitats, ecology, plants, and animals of the Central and South American rainforest. A lively, lucid portrait of the tropics as seen by two uncommonly observant and thoughtful field biologists. Its seventeen marvelous essays introduce the habitats, ecology, plants, and animals of the Central and South American rainforest. Includes a lengthy appendix of practical advice for the tropical traveler.
The average kilometer of tropical rainforest is teeming with life; it contains thousands of species of plants and animals. As The Ornaments of Life reveals, many of the most colorful and eye-catching rainforest inhabitants—toucans, monkeys, leaf-nosed bats, and hummingbirds to name a few—are an important component of the infrastructure that supports life in the forest. These fruit-and-nectar eating birds and mammals pollinate the flowers and disperse the seeds of hundreds of tropical plants, and unlike temperate communities, much of this greenery relies exclusively on animals for reproduction. Synthesizing recent research by ecologists and evolutionary biologists, Theodore H. Fleming and W. John Kress demonstrate the tremendous functional and evolutionary importance of these tropical pollinators and frugivores. They shed light on how these mutually symbiotic relationships evolved and lay out the current conservation status of these essential species. In order to illustrate the striking beauty of these “ornaments” of the rainforest, the authors have included a series of breathtaking color plates and full-color graphs and diagrams.
It is difficult for an inhabitant of our temperate land to realize either the sudden and violent contrasts of the arctic seasons or the wonderful uniformity of the equatorial climate. The lengthening or the shortening days, the ever-changing tints of spring, summer, and autumn, succeeded by the leafless boughs of winter, are constantly recurring phenomena which represent to us the established course of nature. At the equator none of these changes occur; there is a perpetual equinox and a perpetual summer, and were it not for variations in the quantity of rain, in the direction and strength of the winds, and in the amount of sunshine, accompanied by corresponding slight changes in the development of vegetable and animal life, the monotony of nature would be extreme. In the present chapter it is proposed to describe the chief peculiarities which distinguish the equatorial from the temperate climate, and to explain the causes of the difference between them,—causes which are by no means of so simple a nature as are usually imagined. The three great divisions of the earth—the tropical, the temperate, and the frigid zones, may be briefly defined as the regions of uniform, of variable, and of extreme physical conditions respectively. They are primarily determined by the circumstance of the earth’s axis not being perpendicular to the plane in which it moves round the sun; whence it follows that during one half of its revolution the north pole, and during the other half the south pole, is turned at a considerable angle towards the source of light and heat. This inclination of the axis on which the earth rotates is usually defined by the inclination of the equator to the plane of the orbit, termed the obliquity of the ecliptic. The amount of this obliquity is 23½ degrees, and this measures the extent on each side of the equator of what are called the tropics, because within these limits the sun becomes vertical at noon twice a year, and at the extreme limit once a year, while beyond this distance it is never vertical. It will be evident, however, from the nature of the case, that the two lines which mark the limits of the geographical “tropics” will not define any abrupt change of climate or physical conditions, such as characterise the tropical and temperate zones in their full development. There will be a gradual transition from one to the other, and in order to study them separately and contrast their special features we must only take into account the portion of each in which these are most fully exhibited. For the temperate zone we may take all countries situated between 35° and 60° of latitude, which in Europe will include every place between Christiania and Algiers, the districts further south forming a transitional belt in which temperate and tropical features are combined. In order to study the special features of tropical nature, on the other hand, it will be advisable to confine our attention mainly to that portion of the globe which extends for about twelve degrees on each side of the equator, in which all the chief tropical phenomena dependent on astronomical causes are most fully manifested, and which we may distinguish as the “equatorial zone.” In the debateable ground between these two well contrasted belts local causes have a preponderating influence; and it would not be difficult to point out localities within the temperate zone of our maps, which exhibit all the chief characteristics of tropical nature to a greater degree than other localities which are, as regards geographical position, tropical.
This early work by Alfred Russel Wallace was originally published in 1895 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'Natural Selection and Tropical Nature Essays on Descriptive and Theoretical Biology' is a collection of essays that detail Wallace's observations of various bird species and outlines some of his ideas relating to evolutionary theory. Alfred Russel Wallace was born on 8th January 1823 in the village of Llanbadoc, in Monmouthshire, Wales. Wallace was inspired by the travelling naturalists of the day and decided to begin his exploration career collecting specimens in the Amazon rainforest. He explored the Rio Negra for four years, making notes on the peoples and languages he encountered as well as the geography, flora, and fauna. While travelling, Wallace refined his thoughts about evolution and in 1858 he outlined his theory of natural selection in an article he sent to Charles Darwin. Wallace made a huge contribution to the natural sciences and he will continue to be remembered as one of the key figures in the development of evolutionary theory.
Forests, Water and People in the Humid Tropics is the most comprehensive review available of the hydrological and physiological functioning of tropical rain forests, the environmental impacts of their disturbance and conversion to other land uses, and optimum strategies for managing them. The book brings together leading specialists in such diverse fields as tropical anthropology and human geography, environmental economics, climatology and meteorology, hydrology, geomorphology, plant and aquatic ecology, forestry and conservation agronomy. The editors have supplemented the individual contributions with invaluable overviews of the main sections and provide key pointers for future research. Specialists will find authenticated detail in chapters written by experts on a whole range of people-water-land use issues, managers and practitioners will learn more about the implications of ongoing and planned forest conversion, while scientists and students will appreciate a unique review of the literature.
Beautifully illustrated throughout with color plates, photographs, and drawings, this volume is a comprehensive introduction to the natural history of the tropics worldwide. 59 color photos. 21 maps.
"Picturing Tropical Nature reflects on the work of several nineteenth- and twentieth-century scientists and artists, including Alexander von Humboldt, Alfred Russel Wallace, Louis Agassiz, Sir Patrick Manson, and Margaret Mee. Their careers illuminate several aspects of tropicalization: science and art in the making of tropical pictures; the commercial and cultural boom in things tropical in the modern period; photographic attempts to represent tropical hybrid races; antitropicalism and its role in an emerging environmentalist sensibility; and visual depictions of disease in the new tropical medicine."--Jacket.
