Epiphytes- This is about the same, but organized

This topic submitted by Robert Welch ( welchrd@muohio.edu) at 12:52 PM on 5/11/07.

Check out this spider! Thank God they're small! See other arachnids from Costa Rica.

Tropical Field Courses -Interdisciplinary Studies-Miami University

Robert Welch
Epiphytes

I have done a large variety of research and have lots of notes to start my paper. Please give me any suggestions on anything that should bee added or taken out. The paper is going to emphasize the huge biodiversity that occurs in the epiphytes themselves and in the life that they host.

I. Introduction
-What are epiphytes?
-Introduce areas of growth and what they are
II. Variety
-Different kinds of epiphytes
-Over 25,000
-Portion of foliage that is epiphytes
III. Host Trees
-Not parasites to trees
-System to obtain food and water
-Epiphytes benefit from growing in the canopy
-Host trees can benefit
IV. Hosted Ecosystem
-Ecological niche
-Examples of different food webs within epiphytes
-Importance to the biodiversity
V. Research
-Many epiphytes have not been discovered
-Explain how they are being researchedÉfuture
-100Õs are going extinct every year
VI. Conclusion

Sources

Benavides, Ana M., Alvaro J. Duque, Joost F. Duivenvoorden, Alejandra Vasco, and Ricardo Callejas. "A First Quantitative Census of Vascular Epiphytes in Rain Forests of Colombian Amazonia." Biodiversity and Conservation (2005): 739-758.

Butler, Rhett A. "Tropical Rainforests: the Canopy." Mongabay. 2007. 10 May 2007 .

Holscher, Dirk, Lars Kohler, Albert I.j.k. Van Dijk, and Sampurno Bruijnzeel. "The Importance of Epiphytes to Total Rainfall Interception by a Tropical Montane Rain Forest in Costa Rica." Journal of Hydrology 292 (2004): 308-322. www.sciencedirect.com.

Kricher, John. A Neotropical Companion. 2nd ed. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1997.

Lowman, Margaret D. "Plants in the Forest Canopy: Some Reflections Onn Current Research Aand Future Direction." Plant Ecology 153 (2001): 39-50.

Winkler, Manuela, Karl Hulber, and Peter Heitz. "Population Dyanics of Epiphytic Bromeliads: Life Strategies and the Role of Host Branches." Basic and Applied Ecology 8 (2007): 183-196.

Yanoviak, Stephen P., Nalini M Nadkarni, and Jon C. Gering. "Arthopods in Epiphytes: a Diversity Compnent That is Not Effectively Sampled by Canopy Fogging." Biodiversity and Conservation 12 (2003): 731-741.

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