The Contribution of Ectomycorrhizal Fungal Feedbacks to the Maintenance of Tropical Monodominant Rain Forests

Keyword(s):  
2008 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
RAGNAR K. KINZELBACH

The secretarybird, the only species of the family Sagittariidae (Falconiformes), inhabits all of sub-Saharan Africa except the rain forests. Secretarybird, its vernacular name in many languages, may be derived from the Arabic “saqr at-tair”, “falcon of the hunt”, which found its way into French during the crusades. From the same period are two drawings of a “bistarda deserti” in a codex by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (1194–1250). The original sketch obviously, together with other information on birds, came from the court of Sultan al-Kâmil (1180–1238) in Cairo. Careful examination led to an interpretation as Sagittarius serpentarius. Two archaeological sources and one nineteenth century observation strengthened the idea of a former occurrence of the secretarybird in the Egyptian Nile valley. André Thevet (1502–1590), a French cleric and reliable research traveller, described and depicted in 1558 a strange bird, named “Pa” in Persian language, from what he called Madagascar. The woodcut is identified as Sagittarius serpentarius. The text reveals East Africa as the real home of this bird, associated there among others with elephants. From there raises a connection to the tales of the fabulous roc, which feeds its offspring with elephants, ending up in the vernacular name of the extinct Madagascar ostrich as elephantbird.


2012 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 437-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terrence P. McGlynn ◽  
Evan K. Poirson

Abstract:The decomposition of leaf litter is governed, in part, by litter invertebrates. In tropical rain forests, ants are dominant predators in the leaf litter and may alter litter decomposition through the action of a top-down control of food web structure. The role of ants in litter decomposition was investigated in a Costa Rican lowland rain forest with two experiments. In a mesocosm experiment, we manipulated ant presence in 50 ambient leaf-litter mesocosms. In a litterbag gradient experiment, Cecropia obtusifolia litter was used to measure decomposition rate constants across gradients in nutrients, ant density and richness, with 27 separate litterbag treatments for total arthropod exclusion or partial arthropod exclusion. After 2 mo, mass loss in mesocosms containing ants was 30.9%, significantly greater than the 23.5% mass loss in mesocosms without ants. In the litter bags with all arthropods excluded, decomposition was best accounted by the carbon: phosphorus content of soil (r2 = 0.41). In litter bags permitting smaller arthropods but excluding ants, decomposition was best explained by the local biomass of ants in the vicinity of the litter bags (r2 = 0.50). Once the microarthropod prey of ants are permitted to enter litterbags, the biomass of ants near the litterbags overtakes soil chemistry as the regulator of decomposition. In concert, these results support a working hypothesis that litter-dwelling ants are responsible for accelerating litter decomposition in lowland tropical rain forests.


2021 ◽  
Vol 129 ◽  
pp. 107890
Author(s):  
Jorge Déleg ◽  
S. Robbert Gradstein ◽  
Gregorio Aragón ◽  
Paolo Giordani ◽  
Ángel Benítez
Keyword(s):  

2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (6) ◽  
pp. 1164-1176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingrid Parmentier ◽  
Ryan J. Harrigan ◽  
Wolfgang Buermann ◽  
Edward T. A. Mitchard ◽  
Sassan Saatchi ◽  
...  

2009 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 385-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Norden ◽  
Robin L. Chazdon ◽  
Anne Chao ◽  
Yi-Huei Jiang ◽  
Braulio Vílchez-Alvarado

1992 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 348-350
Author(s):  
Mark J. Plotkin
Keyword(s):  

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