TROPICAL RAINFORESTS

Geography and Animals

Group Number #2
Vicah Villanueca#30
Aya Gelonga#20
Andre Rhey C. Haro#6
GEOGRAPHY!
 FAST FACTS!!
Tropical Rainforest as what the name states is located in the tropics
specifically about 23.5 degrees north (Tropic of Cancer) to 23.5
degrees south (Tropic of Capricorn).
Examples of areas where a tropical rainforest can be seen are a.)
South America b.) Africa c.) Asia. The largest tropical rainforest is
the Amazon rainforest of South America. Other large tropical
rainforests are located in Brazil, Indonesia, Zaire and some are on
Hawaii and other islands in the Pacific and Caribbean.
Tropical Rainforests do not occupy all the area of the tropics
because of different factors such as high land elevations and human
occupation.
ANIMALS!!
 Fast Facts!!!
A tropical rainforest is full of life. Many different species of plants and
animals can be seen there.
About 50% of the world’s animal species can be spotted there. We
could simply classify them into vertebrates and invertebrates. Among
the two classifications of animals, the invertebrates are the most
numerous in the biome. Approximately about 95% (900,000) of the
world’s invertebrate species can be seen. About 41,00 species of
vertebrates can be seen in the biome.
Since the tropical rainforest can support thousands of animals, there
might still be a chance that there are unidentified animal species living
there.
All animals as we know it are classified as consumers whether they
are primary, secondary or tertiary.
These consumers usually live in the canopy and emergent layers.
Some animals hardly ever or even never touch the forest floor.
Tropical rainforests also have high animal diversity which means that
there is little or no chance of ecological disturbances in food chains.
Layers of the Forest
 Animal Diversity
• A tropical rainforest has a high animal diversity shown by the
following animals:

Orangutans live in the tree tops of the

Southeast Asian tropical rainforests of Sumatra and Borneo. They
spend most of their lives in trees and descend from the trees very
rarely. The rainforest has an average monthly temperature of 20 to 28°
Celsius. It has an annual rainfall of between 1.5 and 10 meters. It
receives steady rainfall throughout the year with little seasonal
variation.
Also called “Man of the Forest”
The Orangutan is an omnivore but it mainly eats fruits, especially figs. Other food
includes nuts leaves, bark, insects and occasionally birds. Orangutans find
most of this food up in the trees where they live. They even find their water up
in the trees, in hollows, on leaves, and on their own hair after a rain. Most of the
Orangutan's day is spent foraging for food and resting
 Chimpanzees
• The favorite foods of chimpanzees are fruits and young leaves, but they like
many different types of food. In the dry season they will eat buds and blossoms,
soft pitch, stems, galls, honey, bark and resin, seeds and nuts. Insects, like ants
and termites are also in their diet. On rare occasions they will hunt small game
like monkeys, pigs, and antelopes.
• For the most part, chimps forage on the ground. While searching for food,
troops will move around their territory, never staying long in one place. This
allows the vegetation to recover before the chimps return to the area again.
They do not compete for food with monkeys, who forage mostly in the canopy.

• Other examples:
• *Linne’s Sloth (Common Name: Two-
toed sloth
Genus: Cholopeus
Species: didactylus
• * Harpy Eagle (Common Names: Aguila
Harpía, Harpía
Genus: Harpia
Species: harpyja)
 Biotic and abiotic interactions!!!

• Any given place may have several different ecosystems that vary in
size and complexity. A tropical island, for example, may have a rain
forest ecosystem that covers hundreds of square miles, a mangrove
swamp ecosystem along the coast, and an underwater coral reef
ecosystem. No matter how the size or complexity of an ecosystem is
characterized, all ecosystems exhibit a constant exchange of matter
and energy between the biotic and abiotic community. Ecosystem
components are so interconnected that a change in any one
component of an ecosystem will cause subsequent changes
throughout the system.
• Sunlight for example is used by plants for producing food in the
process called photosynthesis. Plants convert it to food together with
other elements such as Carbon dioxide (CO2), water, and minerals
from the soil. In this example, the biotic factor (plant) and the abiotic
factors (water, sunlight) are interacting. This interaction is very
important in keeping balance in the ecosystem.
 Animal and Plant interactions
and Relationships
• -“Like the green alga and three-toed sloth, many plants and animals of
the rain forest depend on each other—often to a higher degree than in
other ecosystems. For example, 90 percent of the trees depend on
animals to disperse their seeds. By comparison, in other types of
forests, often 50 percent or more of the trees rely on wind to disperse
their seeds. These plant and animal relationships are often mutualistic
—that is, both the animal and plant benefit from the relationship. Some
animals protect a plant species against plant-eating enemies, while the
host plants provide lodging. For instance, many tropical plants, such
as the snakewood tree, have hollow structures in their stems or twigs
that stinging or biting ants use as homes. In exchange for a place to
live, the ants protect the plants by marching out to fight would-be
predators—climbing vines as well as hungry animals—as soon as they
detect their presence.
• In some cases, the plant and animal species are so dependent on each
other that they cannot live independently. For example, every species
of fig tree is dependent on one or more species of fig wasps;
conversely, every species of fig wasp is dependent on one or more
species of fig trees. Without the wasps performing the annual task of
pollination, the fig trees would be unable to reproduce and would
eventually face extinction, and without a nursery for their eggs and
larvae, the fig wasp would face a similar fate.”
 Animal Endangerment
• Despite their uniqueness and extraordinary value, tropical rain forests
are being destroyed and badly degraded at an unsustainable rate.
Some scientists estimate that in the early 1990s tropical forests were
being destroyed at a rate of approximately 28 hectares (70 acres) a
minute, or about 14 million hectares (35 million acres) each year—an
area about the size of the state of Wisconsin. This figure marked a
decrease since the 1980s, when approximately 16 million hectares (40
million acres) were destroyed each year, largely due to a reported
decline of deforestation in the Amazon River basin in the early 1990s.
However, satellite images indicate that rates may have rebounded in
the late 1990s as burning in the Amazon increased again. Over the
past three decades alone, about 5 million sq km (about 2 million sq mi)
—or 20 percent of the world’s tropical forests—have been cleared.
During this time, deforestation in tropical Asia reached almost 30
percent. High rates of deforestation are inevitably followed by
alarming rates of plant and animal extinction because many rain forest
species cannot survive outside their pristine rain forest habitat. Some
scientists estimate that dozens of rain forest species are becoming
extinct every day.
 FOOD CHAINS
• mosquito is eaten by a salamander, whom is then eaten by a toucan who dies
of natural causes and is then eaten by ants...and the cycle continues
• sun-plants-Insects-chimpanzees
• All these examples show the food chains in the biome. There is always a
relationship between the animals. Some examples are predation, a very
common relationship between a prey (the one being eaten) and a predator (the
one who eats the prey), mutualism (benefiting from each other, and
commensalism. A food chain usually shows a predator-prey relationship or
predation. The producers produce food using sunlight, water and minerals. they
are eaten by consumers. The primary consumers are eaten by secondary
consumers and so on. The food chain usually ends with a top consumer ( an
animal with little or no predators). When it dies, it is decomposed by
decomposers such as bacteria and the minerals inside the animal are released
and become a part of the abiotic environment and the cycle continues as the
minerals are again used by plants.
REFERENCES:
Mann, Charles C., 1491 New Revelations of the Americas Before
Columbus New York: Knopf, 2005 ISBN 0739464418
Sydenham & Thomas Rainforest Biome . [Online] www.kidcyber.com.au
(2007)
Back to Biomes main page Back to Planet Earth
updated November 2007 (copyright kidcyber)
Biomes Index
Designed by Leisa Tiller, Jason Hadly and Sara Vaughan
2008 - 2009 © Tropical-Rainforest-Animals.com All rights reserved.
by Stuart R. 2002

bibliography:
"Wild Life Fact File", International Masters Publishers, 1994, USA
Chamberlain, Ted. & Guptans, Nancy. "Biomes of the World, Tropical
Rain Forests", Grolier Educational
"Creature Feature: Orangutans",
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/kids/creature_feature/0102/orangu