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The Amazon rainforest is a species-rich biome in which thousands of species live, including animals found nowhere else in the world. To date, there is at least 40,000 different kinds of plants, 427 kinds of mammals, 1,300 kinds of birds, 378 kinds of reptiles, more than 400 kinds of amphibians, and around 3,000 freshwater fish are living in Amazon.
This is a list of plants found in the wild in Amazon Rainforest vegetation of Brazil. The estimates from useful plants suggested that there are 800 plant species of economic or social value in this forest, according to Giacometti (1990). [1]
The biodiversity of plant species is the highest on Earth with one 2001 study finding a quarter square kilometer (62 acres) of Ecuadorian rainforest supports more than 1,100 tree species. [55] A study in 1999 found one square kilometer (247 acres) of Amazon rainforest can contain about 90,790 tonnes of living plants.
High precipitation levels, moderate year-round temperatures, and diverse terrain enable a wide range of species to survive. [5] [7] [11] The rainforest is more biodiverse than any temperate region of similar size in the world, with over 19,000 species identified in Great Smoky Mountains National Park alone.
In the animal kingdom, there is general consensus that Brazil has the highest number of both terrestrial vertebrates and invertebrates of any country in the world. [8] This high diversity of fauna can be explained in part by the sheer size of Brazil and the great variation in ecosystems such as Amazon Rainforest, Atlantic Forest, Cerrado, Pantanal, Pampas and the Caatinga.
The Valdivian forests are a refuge for the Antarctic flora, and share many plant families with the temperate rainforests of New Zealand, Tasmania, and Australia. Fully half the species of woody plants are endemic to this ecoregion. Chusquea quila is a bamboo that grows in humid areas below 500 m, where Chusquea culeou becomes more dominant above.
Xerophytic plants exhibit a diversity of specialized adaptations to survive in such water-limiting conditions. They may use water from their own storage, allocate water specifically to sites of new tissue growth, or lose less water to the atmosphere and so channel a greater proportion of water from the soil to photosynthesis and growth ...
Fungi are also very common in rainforest areas as they can feed on the decomposing remains of plants and animals. The great diversity in rainforest species is in large part the result of diverse and numerous physical refuges , [ 25 ] i.e. places in which plants are inaccessible to many herbivores, or in which animals can hide from predators.