Tag Archive | rainforest

The sap-sucking rainforest menagerie

The rainforest is a place of extravagance: beautiful, brightly colored and sometimes downright bizarre plants and animals of every conceivable form await those intrepid enough to travel to the tropics to seek them out. Here, the diversity of form is matched by a diversity in the way in which organisms survive, what biologists call their ecological ‘niche’. Many rainforest mammals, for example, live much the same way their temperate counterparts do—hunting for other animals in the dark of night, browsing for young leaves and shoots, or digging for roots and tubers. But in the tropics, where temperatures are higher and more constant, and where plants are orders of magnitude more diverse and abundant than in temperate regions, resources are available to support lifestyles that are impossible elsewhere.

In the photo above, a tiny pygmy marmoset, the world’s smallest monkey, clings nervously to the bark of a Parkia tree, taking turns between nervous vigilance and intense interest in a goopy sap that oozes from pockmarks scattered over the entire surface of the tree’s massive trunk. This sap, rich in sugars and nutrients, forms the basis of this tiny primate’s diet. What the marmoset does not receive from the Parkia’s sap it supplements with insects and whatever other small animals it can capture—weighing about a fifth of a pound, suitably-sized prey are few and far between.

Pygmy marmosets are not the only rainforest animals that feed on the nutrient rich gum produced by trees. Insects—butterflies, wasps, lantern bugs, cockroaches, ants, and beetles, to name a few—are attracted to the holes excavated by marmosets in the bark of trees such as the Parkia. For an insect, a visit to a marmoset’s gum hole is a risky affair, since sap flowing from a hole in the tree’s bark suggests a hungry marmoset is nearby. The nutrient- and energy-rich sap is clearly worth the risk, a fact attested to by the number and variety of insects visible at the holes.


A Colobura butterfly fights for space on a tree with aggressive Polistes wasps. The tree is Vitex simosa, a popular species for sap-feeding insects in the western Amazon.

The rainforest is also a place of extremes. In the western Amazon, pygmy marmosets feed from the same tree gum as the white witch (Thysania agrippina), a moth with the largest wingspan of any insect on earth. Measuring in at up to 13 inches across, the moth is as much as two times larger than the tiny marmoset!


Thysania agrippina, the ‘white witch’, is the largest moth in the world. The moth blends into the bark of lichen-covered rainforest trees through camofluage, its only defense against hungry pygmy marmosets.

Below, a lantern bug (Phrictus quinqueparitus) feeds on the sap of a Simarouba amara tree in the Costa Rican rainforest. The bug must often share its tree with the bizarre peanut-headed Fulgora laternaria, another lantern bug.


Incredible rainforest mimicry

For those hoping to view wildlife, a visit to a tropical rainforest can be quite a frustrating experience. Unlike on the plains of Africa, rainforest animals can very easily conceal themselves among the dense vegetation, under a forest canopy that permits very little light to pass through. To make matters worse, many species avoid detection by resemblance to non-animal objects in their environment. Here, insects are the ultimate masters of disguise: stick insects and leaf-mimicking katydids imitate twigs and leaves—some even come complete with tiny spots meant to mimic diseased or chewed leaf bits. Still other insects sport patterns that allow them to blend in seamlessly on lichen-covered tropical tree trunks, some even with tiny frills and flourishes that bear an uncanny resemblance to mosses, fungi, and tree bark. By remaining unseen, small insects survive in a world teeming with hungry predators. Only one who is attuned to the jungle environment and the cryptic habits of its invertebrate denizens will appreciate the true, albeit hidden abundance of rainforest insects.


A geometer moth (family Geometridae) waits out the day on a lichen-covered tree in the Peruvian Amazon.


However, not all insects in the rainforest survive by hiding. Many biting and stinging insects—bees and wasps, mostly—invest little in camouflage, instead inviting hunters to attack with flashy colors and conspicuous behaviors. Those that do so are surprised by an unexpected counterattack and quickly learn that there are probably easier meals to be had. Importantly, predators are capable of remembering an unpleasant attempt to make a meal of an angry wasp, or an excited hive of stinging bees. So the rainforest, then, is full of predators, but those that have learned to avoid stinging insects—most predators probably learn this very early on—avoid insects that pack painful bites and stings. Given the extraordinary abundance of bees and wasps in the rainforest, this strategy appears to serve them well.

Below is a an example of just such a stinging insect: a wasp, right? Wrong. This is a picture of a katydid, a harmless relative of the crickets and grasshoppers. Biologists call such an animal a mimic: the katydid has escaped predation through protective resemblance—mimicry—of the much more noxious, stinging wasp, its model. In this case, the wasp must invest not only in a costly stinger and venom, but also in educating predators of its painful sting. The katydid knows nothing of these investments.


This katydid–Aganacris pseudosphex–is an uncanny wasp mimic. Not only does the katydid resemble the stinging insect, it also behaves like it. Despite their resemblance, the two are very much unrelated evolutionarily.

Amazingly, this katydid takes its trade one big step further than mere resemblance. Not only has this species foregone the typical, protective green coloration of most katydids, it has abandoned nearly every characteristic that makes it identifiable as a katydid at all. Instead of using its powerful hind legs for jumping the way katydids, crickets and grasshoppers tend to do, this individual gets where it needs to go by flying—in precisely the manner the wasp does. When it flies, the long hind legs trail behind, making the katydid nearly indistinguishable from its wasp model in flight. Even the antennae contribute to the deception, gesticulating back and forth, side to side, in a decidedly unkatydid-like, but wholly wasp-like manner. The katydid’s mimicry is exact to the finest detail.

Mimicry—the convergence, in this case, of not only the appearance but also the behavior of creatures as distantly related as a wasp and a katydid—is a potent testament to the transformative power of natural selection. And the wasp-mimicking katydid is but one example. The rainforest is overflowing with such wonder, if only we have the patience, and the eye, to look for it.

Candamo—the last forest without man

Deep within Peru’s Bahuaja-Sonene National Park, two rivers—one crystal-clear and strewn with rapids, the other swirling and muddy—converge to drain the pulsing heart of one of the world’s richest rainforests, a place known as the Candamo Valley. The indigenous Ese Ejja Indians call the region the ‘Last Forest Without Man’—a reference to the area’s extreme remoteness and the fact that no people, not even the Indians themselves, have ever settled here.

Candamo is one of the few remaining large, pristine rainforests left on the planet—tropical forests nearly everywhere else have been destroyed or degraded as tropical countries have scrambled over the past few decades to convert their natural resources into quick wealth. Pristine areas like Candamo factor heavily in an ambitious plan by tropical conservationists to bring humanity into the age of globalization while losing as little of our biological heritage as possible; only large, undisturbed areas can harbor the high numbers of species that will allow this to happen as surrounding forests disappear.

I’m here to survey butterflies—while detailed information are still lacking, some evidence suggests that as many as several hundred butterfly species might be declining throughout the tropical Andes and western Amazonian ecosystems. The reason? A rapidly growing human population, agricultural expansion, and increasing global demand for oil, timber, gold, and other natural resources have all devastated the rainforest habitats that butterflies depend on for survival. In Candamo, butterflies have a safe haven.


A sabre-wing butterfly from Candamo, one spectacular example of the thousands of species found here.

And while biologists currently know almost nothing of Candamo’s rich plant and animal communities, news from other, better-studied protected areas in the region are promising. Peruvian researchers working in the nearby Tambopata Reserve, for instance, have found more than 1,300 butterfly species alone, in only a few months of sampling at a handful of locations. So far, the protected areas are working.

Butterflies, of course, aren’t the only beneficiaries of these conservation areas. As I patrol a floodplain forest in the Candamo Valley with my butterfly net, the telltale signs of another rainforest inhabitant call my attention—the sound of crackling twigs and leaves and crashing as dislodged dead branches tumble onto the forest floor belie the presence of primates. Judging by the noise they’re making, I guess they are spider monkeys, among the largest arboreal mammals in this part of the world. As they approach even closer, I see that I am right.

Before I realize what’s happening, a huge dead branch comes crashing towards me, and explodes above my head and all around me in a hail of decaying shrapnel, complete with a swarm of angry, biting ants. Five seconds later, as I furiously pluck the ants away, another one. And another. I quickly realize I’m under attack.

As I look up, I notice around 10 monkeys staring down at me. One is shaking violently on the branch he’s on, staring me dead in the eyes. Another announces to the rest of the group with a special vocalization, “Get over here, you gotta see this!” These monkeys have never seen a human being.


This Peruvian spider monkey, Ateles chamek, has never seen a human being.

In one of those magical moments I thought only happened to National Geographic explorers or, more likely, adventurers from a time long passed, we exchange incredulous looks—me, astonished at the unusual curiosity displayed by the primates above my head, and they, not knowing what to make of the bizarrely-clad, clumsy ground monkey. These animals have no fear of humans, which can only mean they have never seen any; elsewhere, monkeys flee intruders that would put them on their dinner plates.

After only a few short days I leave Candamo armed with a few new records for butterflies, but also with something greater. My experience here reminds me that there is still hope for conserving the greatest natural gift with which we humans have been endowed. In places like Candamo, monkeys live without fear of us, and we have a place where the raw, wild spirit of nature lives on. Indeed, we are greatly enriched by this place.

Wild orangutans of Borneo

This is a captive orangutan at the Los Angeles Zoo, one of about 900 or so orangutans living in captivity across the world’s network of zoos. Although considered critically endangered by the IUCN, there are still many more orangutans living in the wild than in zoos—something which, sadly, cannot be said for many other critically endangered wildlife species.

Although the global population of wild orangutans is, at this moment, much larger than the captive population, it is crashing—and fast. Only two decades ago, essentially the entire island of Borneo in southeast Asia—including the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak and Kalimantan in Indonesia, which today are home to about 50,000 orangutans—was draped in luxuriant, old-growth rainforest. The trees were dominated by one tropical family: the Dipterocarpaceae. Dipterocarp trees can grow to over 80 meters tall, among the tallest tropical trees in the world. Only twenty years ago, in the shadows of the great dipterocarps, roamed around 100,000 wild orangutans. In only two decades, the population has been reduced by half.

map222009. Orangutan Indonesia Conservation Strategies and Action Plan.  The Ministry of Forestry_ed

Disappearing orangutan habitat in Borneo, more than half of which has already been lost. The population has been reduced by a similar number, with no sign of slowing. Map by Ministry of Forestry, Indonesia.

Today, the majority of the island of Borneo is covered in just one species of tree: Elaeis guineensis, or the African oil palm. When the palm oil fever took hold here, the rainforest quickly gave way. Since oil palms take roughly 5 years to start producing oil, the felling of the valuable dipterocarp forests subsidized the initial waiting period. Once they started producing, the profits from the sale of the oil lined the pockets of a few large producers and a wave of quick wealth spread across Borneo. Since the trade in palm oil is so lucrative, native forests that are cut for palm oil tend to stay cut. Worst of all, conversion of dipterocarp forests—the only home to wild orangutans on the planet—is currently not slowing down.

Palm Oil Plantation_Daniel Rosenberg

As its name suggests, the African oil palm originated in Africa. It grows very well, however, in tropical southeast Asia, including across the entire range of the orangutan in Borneo. Except for a short layer of ground cover, oil palms planted in rows shade out all other plant life, resulting in green biological ‘deserts’. Photo by Daniel Rosenberg.

With the global population teetering at nearly 7 billion and growing along with the demand for natural resources as affluence spreads in developing countries, the plight of the wild orangutan seems inevitable. Tropical forests suffer disproportionately, due to the complexities of global trade—developing countries in the world’s tropics seem to be scrambling to convert their forests into tangible wealth, and developed and developing countries alike seem to have an insatiable demand for the products that come from the forest. The scale of the problem—including in Borneo, where palm oil is replacing orangutan habitat to satisfy global demand—can seem overwhelming, hopeless.

palm_oil_Dampung Sepakat, Hulu Selangor, Malaysia_Ahmad Fuad Morad

Oil palm fruits, from which palm oil will be extracted, are harvested in Dampung Sepakat, peninsular Malaysia. Photo by Ahmad Fuad Morad.

Until my recent trip to Borneo, I thought I had at least a rudimentary understanding of the palm oil dilemma there. When I flew over the island, however, I was taken aback by the true extent of the devastation: looking out the window of the small twin-prop plane during my one hour flight across the island, I saw almost nothing else. Palm oil plantations are interrupted only by small clearings in which their owners place refineries and, although they are very green and vast, they are essentially biological deserts—the overwhelming majority of species found in the native dipterocarp rainforests are completely absent in the plantations. Orangutans that are not killed or taken as pets by planters do not find food here and either starve or try to go elsewhere. Sadly, for many there is nowhere else.


To maximize profits, a rainforest in Indonesia is completely razed to make way for a vast oil palm plantation. Orangutans and other wildlife have nowhere to go when their habitat is converted at this scale.

For me, my experience flying over Borneo was the first time such a monumental environmental disaster presented itself so clearly: native forests and orangutan habitat are being cleared for just one single commodity, planted in neat rows in all directions. The solution—in theory at least—was also clear: stop buying palm oil! Unfortunately, palm oil is an incredibly versatile food product, and it’s found in nearly everything processed. In addition, the demand goes far beyond just the developed world, where people are much less likely to take interest in the abstract consequences of their actions as consumers. Frankly, a palm oil boycott is unlikely to have a decisive effect any time soon on the wild orangutan population.

Luckily, there are other things one can do. There are a number of organizations working in Borneo and southeast Asia to conserve threatened wildlife. The WWF Malaysia has a number of programs to save not only orangutans but also rhinos and pygmy elephants, and since they work very efficiently, every dollar you give goes a long way. Give this or any other nonprofit working in Borneo anything you can—500 dollars or just 5 dollars—it really will make a great difference.


Perhaps a more rewarding way in which you can help wild orangutans is to travel yourself to Borneo to see them. Borneo isn’t much of a destination on most Americans’ radar—it’s far away, and mysterious. But Borneo—and Sabah in particular, home to a large population of wild orangutans—is a very friendly place, with a well-developed infrastructure for tourism. By visiting this place and putting money directly into the pockets of the individuals and organizations working to save orangutans and other endangered wildlife, you are casting a vote for the protection of nature—ecotourism is one of the few economic incentives, if not the only economic incentive, to leave the forest standing. Without tourist dollars coming in, the forests will likely be cut. And what a wonderful reward for the traveller—to see one of the last remaining wild orangutans of Borneo, and in so doing help to ensure that our wild cousins, the ‘people of the forest’, have wild rainforests to roam, for now and forever.

Army ant headquarters: the bivouac






Eciton burchelli ants on a raid in the Costa Rican rainforest.





The Kapok tree and the incredible physics of water transport


Ceiba_Bocas del Toro





Ceiba_Sacha Lodge





Hydrogen-Bonds-Colored-JC_2012-1080x675_Jeremy Conn

Cohesion is the result of hydrogen bonds between water molecules.






Roosting passion-vine butterflies

By Geoff Gallice

Bright colors in nature generally indicate danger. A brightly colored animal, for instance, typically uses its flashy hues to warn potential predators of a threat it might pose. Usually that threat is chemical: animals, ranging from insects and other invertebrates to frogs and snakes, have evolved a bewildering array of toxic poisons, venoms, and other chemical surprises that await would-be enemies. Bright colors help predators remember unpleasant experiences—they quickly learn to avoid the colorful meal that made them sick or stung them.

The passion-vine butterflies are a group of brightly colored or aposematic butterflies found throughout the rainforests of Central and South America. The most diverse genus is Heliconius and, as its common name suggests, this group of butterflies feeds on passion vines that are loaded with compounds known as cyanogenic glycosides—you don’t need to be a biochemist to guess that the cyan at the beginning of that name means it isn’t good to eat.

Heliconius butterflies typically have bright, contrasting colors and patterns covering the wings. This individual belongs to the 'tiger' mimicry complex. Photo by Alias 0591 on Flickr.

Heliconius butterflies typically have bright, contrasting colors and patterns covering the wings. This individual belongs to the ‘tiger’ mimicry complex. Photo by Alias 0591 on Flickr.

The glycosides are not harmful to Heliconiusbutterflies though. In fact, the butterfly larvae greedily devour vines that are high in these compounds. From them they are able to synthesize derivatives—similar chemical forms—that can be stored in the butterfly’s tissues.

A caterpillar of Heliconius charitonia feeds on a passion vine, the source of these butterflies' protective glycoside compounds. Photo by Dean Morley, Flickr.

A caterpillar of Heliconius charitonia feeds on a passion vine, the source of these butterflies’ protective glycoside compounds. Photo by Dean Morley, Flickr.

Thanks to its diet of passion vines, a Heliconius butterfly is a mouthful of toxic, foul-tasting poison to a predator, which, in the day at least, is usually a bird. And since Heliconius are brightly colored, birds quickly learn to avoid them. Thus, the butterflies are chemically defended and, once the local birds have been educated, have essentially no diurnal enemies.

But what happens at night, when visual signals are less effective as a warning to nocturnal predators that hunt without good eyesight? Bats, for instance, hunt at night using echolocation or sonar, in which high-frequency sounds are produced and distance and direction to prey are judged largely by the time taken for the sounds to bounce, or echo, back to the bat’s ears. With echolocation, eyesight is unnecessary, and bats that echolocate are able to hunt very effectively even in total darkness. Many have monochromatic or otherwise very poor vision.

Heliconius butteflies get their color from pigmented scales that cover the wing surface. Bright reds and yellows contrast well with velvety blacks, making for a strong, visible signal. Photo by the Butterfly Genetics Group, Cambridge Univ.


One peculiar aspect of Heliconius butterfly biology is their roosting behavior—that is, at night, they sleep collectively in aggregations. Roosts may contain as many as 10-15 individuals, although typically the number is less. The butterflies begin to gather at sunset and take as much as one hour to settle in for the night; they use tiny hooks at the ends of their feet to hang, upside down, from nearby small branches and the tips of dead twigs.

A small Heliconius roost, composed of only three individuals, in the lowland rainforest of Manu National Park, in Peru. Photographed using the Meet Your Neighbours-style field studio, in situ.


Many biologists believe that animals aggregate in order to dilute the effects of predation. Think of the chances of a buffalo being picked off by a lion alone versus in a large herd. The same should be true for aposematic butterflies in the daytime—considering that their bright colors most likely serve as a warning to birds, daytime Heliconius roosts would make a lot of sense. But the butterflies roost together at night, and it’s not clear why.

As a graduate student interested in tropical butterfly biology at the University of Florida, Christian Salcedo wanted to understand why Heliconius roost at night. Do the butterflies have any predators? Could they be using unseen signals to fend off attack, much in the way they use color in the day?

Salcedo decided to employ technology to study the question of Heliconius roosting at night. He created a camera system—he called it a “stand-alone nocturnal infrared camera system”—that would catch Heliconius predators in the act by activating video when an infrared beam was crossed.

After a number of nights the remote cameras had recorded several disturbance events, during which an animal—there was an agouti, an armadillo, a rabbit, and even a few stick insects—disturbed the butterflies, causing one or more of them to rouse momentarily from their sleep. In a jungle bumping with nocturnal creatures, this wasn’t very surprising. However, the most interesting event occurred when a bat was observed picking a Heliconius butterfly from its roost. Several moments later, the butterfly returned, apparently unharmed, to its roost-mates. Of course, Salcedo captured the event on video.

Watch videos of Heliconius roost disturbances here:


In some ways, these experiments shed light on the mysterious Heliconius night roosts. Based on the footage gathered with the remote camera system, we now know that Heliconius probably do have nocturnal predators. But the fact that the cameras recorded a butterfly returning to the roost after an attack, unharmed, actually raises many more questions.

Did the cameras capture an instance of predator education? That is, the bat clearly tried but did not eat the butterfly—in the video, do we witness the learning event that results in other Heliconius avoiding attack by at least this individual bat? If so, how can the bat recognize future roosting Heliconius and know to stay away?

Some bats are able to see ultraviolet light, which is reflected by parts of the wings of Heliconius. Could that be the key mechanism? Or perhaps predators like bats are able to smell pheromones or other chemical signals produced by the butterflies that act in a similar way as bright colors in the daytime, preventing a repeat bad-taste experience. Do bats typically capture prey and assess their palatability before deciding to devour them or let them go unharmed?

Video footage of a nocturnal attack is tantalizing, but we still have a lot to learn about the roosting behavior of Heliconius butterflies. The rarity of nocturnal attacks on the butterflies—Salcedo’s experimental roosts were attacked only several times in hundreds of hours of filming—make the matter of studying them more difficult. But, as is increasingly the case, technology coupled with a curious, motivated young graduate student willing to brave long, late hours and harsh tropical conditions can make great discoveries regarding the fascinating phenomenon of the roosting passion-vine butterflies.

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