Hobbies And Interests
Forest Architects
In the lowland rainforests of Central Africa, marshy clearings called bais are wildlife magnets, attracting everything from bongo antelope to western lowland gorillas. Among the most influential visitors are African forest elephants, a smaller, more retiring relative of the huge bush elephants of the continent's savannas, woodlands and semi-deserts. The elephants visit bais to obtain nutrients, wallow and generally socialize, and their pathways between clearings and other foraging sites are veritable highways through the dense forest. Asian elephants create similar pathways. Such long-used trails add structural diversity to the rainforest and may also be adopted by other creatures in their travels.
Olympic Rainforests
The Pacific coastal ranges of the U.S. Northwest, British Columbia and southeastern Alaska host the world's largest tract of temperate rainforest. One of the most unique prospers on the western flanks of the Olympic Mountains on the Olympic Peninsula of western Washington. In a number of mountain-fed river valleys, including the Hoh, Queets, Quinalt and Bogachiel, epiphyte-drenched groves of Sitka spruce, western hemlock, western red-cedar, Douglas-fir, bigleaf maple and other trees shelter herds of Roosevelt elk, the largest of the elk subspecies. The healthy populations of elk maintain an open forest floor in the Olympic rainforests. The animals' heavy browsing keeps the groundcover and understory airy, creating a cathedral-like landscape beneath the massive trees.
Seed Dispersal
According to the Elephant Listening Project, fruiting trees in Central African rainforests often tend to be more abundant along elephant trails than in the interior of pathless tracts, suggesting the important function of seed-dispersal performed by fruit-eating animals. Another important disperser is the western lowland gorilla, which, while feasting on fruits, ingests large quantities of seeds that pass unharmed through their digestive tracts. In "African Rain Forest Ecology and Conservation," Tutin and Vedder note that certain fruiting trees sprout abundantly in the vicinity of gorilla nests, where the huge apes chronically defecate. In the rainforests of the tropical Americas, monkeys and birds are among the chief seed dispersers. One study, published in 2002 in "Biotropica," showed that red howler monkeys in the central Amazon spread the seeds of 137 tree species.
Pollination
Insects, birds, mammals and other organisms service rainforest plants on another aspect of their reproduction: pollinating their flowers. In Australian rainforests, for example, pollinators include bees, wasps, flies, beetles, hawkmoths, butterflies, birds and bats, including the large species called flying foxes. In New World rainforests, the tiny, long-billed hummingbirds are important agents of pollination for a host of flowering plants.