Biomes: Rainforest7th Period

Capuchin Monkey

Capuchin Monkey

Capuchin Monkeys live in the Amazon Rainforest.

They are omnivores who eat both plants animals like fruit leaves, seeds, berries, flowers spiders, oysters, birds, small mammals and insects.

The main predators of Capuchin monkeys are Boa Constrictors, Jaguars, Hawks and Eagles.

Capuchin monkeys are highly intelligent who use sticks, branches and stones to open shells, nuts and hard animals.

Capuchin Monkeys avoid prey by living up high in the treetops where prey like Boa Constrictors and Jaguars can not reach them.

Capuchin Monkeys use warning calls to alarm members of the group when danger might occur. They are also very territorial they mark their Capuchin Monkeys dominate 80 to 212 acres of land for food . This how they are equipped to live in the rainforest and outcompete its opponent.

Spider Monkey

Spider Monkey

Spider monkeys have long, lanky arms and prehensile (gripping) tails that enable them to move gracefully from branch to branch and tree to tree and it allows them to reach food up in the canopy where animals on the ground cant reach. Spider monkeys (of several species) live in the tropical rain forests of Central and South America and occur as far north as Mexico. Spider monkeys or mostly primary consumers. They base their diet and can live off of fruit and nuts. Their fruit-loving tendencies causes the monkeys to play an important role in dispersing the seeds of many fruiting trees of the rainforest. When fruits are not available, the monkeys consume the leaves of a variety of tree species. Additionally, spider monkeys consume eggs, invertebrates and other small creatures from time to time. During the dry season or when food is scarce, the monkeys consume flowers, honey and tree bark. Hunters hunt spider monkeys for food and also sell the mother with young offspring for pet trade.

African Elephant

African Elephant

The elephant is the biggest mammal in Asia. In Asia elephants can be found in the rainforests there. In Africa, they are found in the Savannah's. Elephants can be found in India, parts of Arica and Asia. The elephant falls into the primary consumers category. They feed off the producers being grasses and plants. The elephants  found in  the rainforest have adapted by becoming smaller and wider, with a longer jaw thus giving them a longer narrower face. Some elephants have also adapted by changing color from the brown to grey to even black, this gives them a better camouflage in the forest in order to find from predators.

Bullet Ant

Bullet Ant

Parponera clavata is known as the “bullet ant” because of the intense pain it inflicts with its stings. The bullet ant lives in South America, Central America Rainforests. Bullet ants commonly live off of plant nectar. They have also been known to eat other insects like termites and other types of food including sap and nectar. Bullet ant’s adaptations help them avoid being prey to the anteaters. They develop stingers which are thought to have evolved in order to protect them from predators. When the nest of bullet ant is disturbed, the defenders of the colony swarm out release a very musky odor and signal audible warning to each other. They may also grab and often times sting the intruder. Venom contained within the stinger, called poneratoxin, is a neurotoxin peptide. It affects the victim's voltage dependent sodium ion channels and in the process blocks any synaptic transmissions traveling throughout the central nervous system. Poneratoxin causes an extreme amount of pain within ten minutes of the ant's sting and causes slow harsh muscle contractions and a burning sensation which usually last 24 hours.

 

Tamarin Monkey

The Tamarin’s diet mainly consists of many plants but in some cases they may consume fruit, a variety of different insects, and occasionally small vertabrates. Their homes may vary, many tamarin’s live in the Amazon Basin but their original country of origin are southeast Peru, and northeastern brazil. It’s coat protects it from predators in the forest during different seasons.

Gliding Tree Frog

Gliding Tree Frog

Gliding tree frogs live in tropical and subtropical wetlands (some in Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Panama) and swampy areas. Most of their time is spent in high trees, they’re nocturnal. They only go to the ground during mating season. They are carnivorous and eat things like crickets, flies, and moths. Things that eat them are: snakes, birds, monkeys, and large rodents. Ways that it adapts are: Its colors change from light (day) to dark (night) and their large webbed toes help them glide and move easier through their habitat (trees) and makes it easier for them to do things like searching for food. This species is equipped to live in the rainforest and outcompete its opponents because it is small, and its adaptations make is easier to hide from predators and easier for it to survive.

Red Crab Spider

Red Crab Spider

Red Crab Spiders can be yellow, white, or pale green, depending on the color of the flower or leaf that they are trying to blend in to. To trap their prey, they use camouflage hunting techniques and instead of using a web, they use their front legs to catch their prey. (They use camouflage to acquire food and to avoid predators) Since they use camouflage and barely like to move around, it can be very difficult to spot a Red Crab Spider with a naked eye. They mainly eat insects and bees. The predators of this type of spider are birds, lizards, and shrews. The Red Crab Spider can be found in a number of locations including: Africa, the Amazon Rainforest, the Arctic, Asia, Australia, China, Europe, the Indian subcontinent, Madagascar, the Mediterranean, North America, Russia, South America, and the United Kingdom.

Slime Mold

Slime Mold

Slime molds usually live in cool, shady moist places in the woods or on decaying logs, dead leaves, or other organic matter that holds moisture. Slime mold will eat things like bacteria, spores, and other organic matter like amoeba but once it fully grows will be fed on other animals. The fungi will absorb nutrients from living or dead organisms that they grow on. The fungi is important to this environment because it releases nitrogen, carbon, and other nutrients needed for organisms to enrich the soil. As nutrients are produced so are the fungi.

Howler Monkey

Howler Monkey's are the largest of all the New World monkeys and they are native to the tropical forests of Central and South America. Their diet consists mainly of leaves, fruits and nuts, such as the fig. The howler monkey has adapted to live and eat in this environment by having a long tail used either to hold themselves onto branches or to even pluck fruit. They also have have loud vocalizations, or "howls" used for territory protection and mating. The only danger that they need to watch out for are hunters and poachers. Otherwise they are safe at the top of their food chain, and at the top of their tree. 

Macaranga

Macaranga

Macaranga Tanarius, found in South East Asian, Papua New Guinean, and east of Australian rainforest. It is a Pioneer plant that grows in or near coastal rainforests. It is a producer which has a mutual relationship with ants which attack herbivorous insects and either drive them away or feed on them. It is a shrub or bushy tree reaching 12 m and a stem diameter of 40 cm, a short and crooked grey brown bark, bumps and irregularities. Smooth branches and bluish grey with leaf scars and germinate seeds with no difficulties.

Flying Lemur

Flying Lemur

A flying lemur also known as the kagwang are one of two species of flying lemurs they lives in the treetops of tropical rainforest of the Philippines and the southern parts of Asia. Lemurs are herbivorous and feed on soft plants like fruit, flowers, buds, young leaves, nectar, and sap. Eagles and humans eat Lemurs, they have bold patches of fur that look like lichen which provides camo against predators. Lemurs outcompete their opponents by there camo and that because they are nocturnal.

Siamang

Siamang

Siamang live in the forest of Southeast Asia. Siamang are omnivores with means they eat plants and small animals. They forage for fruits, leaves, spiders, birds and bird eggs. They are not often preyed on because not many predators can catch them in the trees. They live in the upper canopy and hunt in the trees of the forest.

Chimpanzee

Chimpanzee

Chimpanzee‘s are generally fruit and plant eaters, but they also consume insects, eggs, and meat, including carrion. Leopards are the main enemies of chimpanzees. They live in the tropical rainforest. Chimps are primarily rainforest animals. Chimpanzee’s will spend time both in trees and on the ground, but will usually sleep in a tree where it will build a nest for the night. They once inhabited most of this region, but their habitat has been dramatically reduced in recent years. Chimpanzees this means long arms and flexible joints for swinging and climbing, and thick black hair to shield them from rainforest downpours.  They can hear distant sounds and work out where the noise is coming from – very important if it's a warning of danger. They use rocks as hammers to crack open nuts over another stone, and they find twigs to poke into the tiniest of holes to pluck out tasty ants without getting their fingers bitten.

 

Parasitic Fungi

Parasitic Fungi

A parasitic fungus thrives by latching on to other organisms and taking nutrients from them giving nothing in return. It finds a healthy organism, invades it and drains it until the organism dies and continues to feed on it. Other fungi can kill the parasitic fungi such as Mycorrhical fungi. It reproduces and spreads throughout organisms like a disease, growing on them and traveling inside of their body. It grows from parasites living inside a fungus and organisms eating that fungus such as a mushroom

Vines

Vines

            A large majority of vines grow in the tropical rainforests, somewhere around ninety percent. Vines tend to have very woody and thick stocks, the length and shape various from species to species. They use trees for support as they climb up from the rainforest’s floor. They climb so that they can reach the top of the forest to attain sunlight. They climb by winding up the tree trunks or by using tendrils. At the top of the canopy they spread throughout by attaching to other vines and trees. This is also helpful for the trees due to the large mass of vines protecting the trees by adding support through strong winds.

Pitcher Plant

Pitcher Plant

Pitcher plants occurs natural in Madagascar, china, New Guinea Australia. There two types of pitcher plants one is called Nepenthaceae and Sarraceniaceae, the Nepenthaceace can be found in south china, Indonesia and other countries, and Sarraceniaceae can be found in north America. There also carnivore eating plants that eat insects or other animals can also eat small frogs or birds. The adaptation the pitcher plants like to live in is where the soil is thin or poor nutrients especially in nitrogen and in acidic bogs which is dead plans and rock outcropping. The leaves can fold and shape like cups were the predators fall inside and the pitcher plants eats it. They adapt to their environment by staying in nitrogen soil where they trap insects and the insects fall inside ,and when it falls inside and goes in the walls which gives the plants nutrient so basically they stay were a lot of dirty soil are where they meet worms and other bacterial insect so it easily for them to catch them and eat them.

Orangutan

Orangutan

The orangutan is a great ape that is dominant in the rainforests. Currently, they are found only in the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra. Orangutans are secondary consumers; they mainly eat fruits and leaves, but if food is scarce they may eat insects or bark from trees, and they are prey to snow leopards and tigers. They usually get most of their food during the high fruit season, eating as much that could total up to 11,000 calories. To avoid predators, they make nests up high on the canopy to live in. It’s also where they would care for their young. Orangutans are the most intelligent primates. They are able to make tools for themselves to survive and make tasks easier. Examples of the tools they use would be to extract insects from their living areas and also use seed extracting tools to harvest seeds from hard-husked fruits.

Magnificent Bird of Paradise

Magnificent Bird of Paradise

The Magnificent Bird of Paradise is a species where all the birds of paradise fall under. They live amongst hills and mid-mountain forest. Their diet consists of fruit and insects. This species has no natural carnivorous predators but due to excessive hunting by humans their kind slowly diminishes. The Birds of Paradise have a mating dance to entice the female species to get them to like him. The Birds of Paradise have a relatively easy life.

Sqiurrel Monkey

Squirrel Monkey

Squirrel Monkeys are one of the most common species of monkeys that live in Central and South America. They spend most of their time up in the tree canopies, but come down to look for food. They feed on fruits and insects, and its biggest enemy is the eagle. Its adaptations include their thighs that are shorter relative to their lower legs; this allows more jumping force. Also, their fur makes a secretion, especially on the tail that turns away predators.

Hardwood Trees

Hardwood Trees

Hardwood Trees are commonly found in North American forest by their leaves, fruit, and flowers. Hardwood trees are classed by plants with ovules enclosed for protection in an ovary. Hardwood trees have broadleaves which are deciduous and lose their leaves seasonally. Leaves can be either single bladed or compound with an attached stem. In the rainforest hardwood trees have bigger base and roots. Hardwood trees help preserve the rainforest and the tropical hardwood species.

Strangler Fig Tree

Strangler Fig Tree

The strangler fig tree gained the name “strangler” because of its pattern of growth upon host trees, which, in many cases, leads to the host’s death. It begins as a sticky seed that an animal leaves once it has consumed the main fruit. As it grows, long roots develop and descend along the trunk of the host tree, eventually reaching the ground and going into the soil. Several of its roots do this, and they become grafted together, forming a kind of strangling latticework, which creates a nearly complete sheath around the trunk. The host tree’s canopy becomes shaded by the thick fig foliage, its trunk choked by the surrounding root sheath, and its own root system forced to compete with that of the strangling fig. Its leaves are a green color. In the rainforest, strangler fig trees are ecologically important. The hollow centres of the strangler figs are full of large hollows that provide shelter and breeding sites for bats, birds, and other animals. Perhaps more importantly, stranglers are “keystone species” in that they provide food to a wide variety of animals during times of scarcity.