Tropical Forest Life

● For the many types of plants and animals on the earth there is a general pattern of increasing complexity as one moves toward the tropics. Researchers find that the richness and diversity of animal and plant life in tropical forests is almost beyond belief. Whereas a typical hectare (2.5 acres) of woodland in the midwestern United States has about eleven species of trees, one researcher found over two hundred species of trees in the same area of rain forest in New Guinea. As another example, 222 different breeding species of birds have been found in all of Alaska. However, in Panama, with less than one twentieth the amount of land area, 667 different species have been located. And one professor of biology observed that “much of this diversity has not even been cataloged.”