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Because herbivores prefer nutritionally dense plants and avoid plants or plant parts with defense structures, a greater amount of plant matter is left unconsumed within the ecosystem. [27] Herbivore avoidance of low-quality plant matter may be why terrestrial systems exhibit weaker top-down control on the flow of energy.
More than half of the world's species of plants and animals are found in rainforests. [24] Rainforests support a very broad array of fauna, including mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds and invertebrates. Mammals may include primates, felids and other families.
For example, there are similar looking animals in the rainforests of South America and Africa that share ecological niches, however the mammals from South America are rodents while the African ones are ungulates. This clearly demonstrates the convergent evolution between species found in tropical forest environments. [15]
The remainder is consumed by animals while still alive and enters the plant-based trophic system. After plants and animals die, the organic matter contained in them enters the detritus-based trophic system. [15] Ecosystem respiration is the sum of respiration by all living organisms (plants, animals, and decomposers) in the ecosystem. [16]
The emergent layer, above the canopy, exists in tropical rainforests. Each layer has a different set of plants and animals, depending upon the availability of sunlight, moisture, and food. The Forest floor is covered in dead plant material such as fallen leaves and decomposing logs, which detritivores break down into new soil. The layer of ...
Using instruments like a scintillometer, soil heat flux plates or radiation meters, the components of the energy balance can be calculated and the energy available for actual evapotranspiration can be solved. The SEBAL and METRIC algorithms solve for the energy balance at the Earth's surface using satellite imagery. This allows for both actual ...
The balance of nature, also known as ecological balance, is a theory that proposes that ecological systems are usually in a stable equilibrium or homeostasis, which is to say that a small change (the size of a particular population, for example) will be corrected by some negative feedback that will bring the parameter back to its original "point of balance" with the rest of the system.
Rainforests are home to half of all the living animal and plant species on the planet. [7] Two-thirds of all flowering plants can be found in rainforests. [5] A single hectare of rainforest may contain 42,000 different species of insect, up to 807 trees of 313 species and 1,500 species of higher plants. [5]