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The linkages in a food web illustrate the feeding pathways, such as where heterotrophs obtain organic matter by feeding on autotrophs and other heterotrophs. The food web is a simplified illustration of the various methods of feeding that link an ecosystem into a unified system of exchange.
Within a food web, a food chain is a succession of organisms that eat other organisms and may, in turn, be eaten themselves. The trophic level of an organism is the number of steps it is from the start of the chain. A food web starts at trophic level 1 with primary producers such as plants, can move to herbivores at level 2, carnivores at level ...
An area of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. The tropical rainforests of South America contain the largest diversity of species on Earth. [1] [2] Tropical rainforest climate zones (Af). Tropical forests: from the UN FRA2000 report. Tropical rainforests are dense and warm rainforests with high rainfall typically found between 10° north and south ...
Tropical rainforests have been called the "jewels of the Earth" and the "world's largest pharmacy", because over one quarter of natural medicines have been discovered there. [2] Rainforests as well as endemic rainforest species are rapidly disappearing due to deforestation, the resulting habitat loss and pollution of the atmosphere. [3]
For comparison, a tropical rainforest biome may contain thousands of tree species, but this is not to say mangrove forests lack diversity. Though the trees are few in species, the ecosystem that these trees create provides a habitat for a great variety of other species, including as many as 174 species of marine megafauna. [11]
The Tropical Forest Research Station was founded in 1940 and became a center for ecosystem research. [1] It was designated as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1976 with the objective of understanding "the long-term dynamics of tropical forest ecosystems characterized by large-scale, infrequent disturbance, rapid processing of organic material, and high habitat and species diversity".
Borneo rainforest. Some tropical forest types are difficult to categorize. While forests in temperate areas are readily categorized on the basis of tree canopy density, such schemes do not work well in tropical forests. [1] There is no single scheme that defines what a forest is, in tropical regions or elsewhere.
The roots of tropical ecology can be traced to the voyages of European naturalists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Men who might be considered early ecologists such as Alexander Von Humboldt, Thomas Belt, Henry Walter Bates, and even Charles Darwin sailed to tropical locations and wrote extensively about the exotic flora and fauna they encountered.