Teaching Tropical Rainforest Biology
Tropical Rainforest Factoids
- In his book The Diversity of Life, E.O. Wilson reports on finding 43 species of ants on a single tree in Peru. This, he says, is about the same number of ant species as in the British Isles.
- In Indiana, where I live, there are about 54 species of mammals. In Peninsular Malaysia, which has about the same area, there are 100 species of bats alone.
- In Central and South American lowland tropical rainforest there are some 560 species of mammals, more than in all of North America.
- In southwestern Indiana, my Environmental Science class found about 12 species of trees in an area of 0.8 acres. In an area of equal size in northeastern Peru, we might expect to find over 100 species of trees.
- At present, about 1.5 million species of organisms are known to inhabit the earth. Recent studies suggest that there could be 10 to 30 million species in the earth’s tropical rainforests alone.
- Only about 1% of tropical rainforest plants has been examined for their medicinal properties, but around 25% of our prescription pharmaceuticals come from these very plants.
- Indiana has about 110 species of trees. Dr. Alwyn Gentry found nearly 300 tree species in a one-hectare (2.5 acres) plot in northeastern Peru.
- The Rainforest Action Network estimates that about 78 000 000 acres of rainforest are destroyed each year. This is equivalent to 2.5 acres per second.
- At current rates of destruction, almost all tropical rainforest ecosystems will be lost in the next two decades.
- It has been estimated that tropical rainforest converted to cattle pasture will yield about $150 per hectare. If the forest is cut for timber, it will produce around $900 per hectare. However, if the forest is harvested in a sustained yield manner (fruits, nuts, timber), it will produce an economic value of over $6000 per hectare for years.
- According to The Nature Conservancy, in the year 1500 over 6 000 000 indigenous people inhabited the Brazilian rainforest. In 1992 less than 200 000 remained.
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