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Ecosystems and Energy Flow
Published in Gary S. Moore, Kathleen A. Bell, Living with the Earth, 2018
Gary S. Moore, Kathleen A. Bell
The reduced light beneath the canopy has encouraged a number of plant strategies to reach the top of the rainforest. Air-plants or epiphytes grow on branches high in the trees. Being supported by the tree limbs, epiphytes extract moisture from the air and trap leaf-fall and wind-blown dust for nutrients. Bromeliads (pineapple family), orchids, cactuses, and ferns are all represented in the canopy as epiphytes. Many plants such as members of the fig family begin life as epiphytes in the canopy and send their root systems downward to the forest floor. Such plants are then called stranglers. Many woody vines grow quickly up the tree trunks when a temporary gap opens in the canopy. Here they flower and fruit in the treetops. These woody vines are called lianas and are often deciduous. Few animals exist on the forest floor. Beetles, butterflies, and other insects abound in the canopy. A rich array of birds, monkeys, and frogs also inhabit the canopy.
Flying UAVs in Constrained Environments: Best Practices for Flying within Complex Forest Canopies
Published in J.B. Sharma, Applications of Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems, 2019
Ramesh Sivanpillai, Gregory K. Brown, Brandon S. Gellis
With the availability of good quality drones at an affordable cost, and advances in image capturing hardware and processing software, there is considerable interest among botanists and canopy biologists to use drones for collecting data on vascular plant epiphytes. These researchers could view drones as a panacea to overcome difficulties associated with climbing and descending trees in tropical environments for epiphyte reconnaissance. Using an appropriate copter-drone, data can be collected on epiphytes growing on high canopy surfaces that are visually inaccessible from the ground (Figures 12.3 and 12.4).
The Emergence of Temporal Order in the Ecosystems
Published in Pier Luigi Gentili, Untangling Complex Systems, 2018
In commensalism, one organism draws benefits whereas the other receives neither benefits nor harms. Examples of commensalism are offered by epiphytes. All epiphytes use trees only for attachment and derive moisture and nutrients from the air, rain, and sometimes from debris accumulating around them. Sessile invertebrates that grow on plants or other animals represent many commensals.
Mercury cycling and isotopic fractionation in global forests
Published in Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology, 2022
Xun Wang, Wei Yuan, Che-Jen Lin, Xinbin Feng
In addition, throughfall and woods contain a large fraction of Hg originated from atmospheric Hg0, which was underestimated in earlier assessment. The role of root and canopy epiphyte cover, such as moss and lichen that take up atmospheric Hg0 (Wang et al., 2019b) also need attention. A preliminary estimate of Hg uptake by moss covers in forest ecosystems reaches 630 ± 315 Mg yr−1 (Wang et al., 2020b), equivalent to half of the global litterfall Hg deposition (Fu et al., 2016; Wang et al., 2016a), which requires further verification.
Early changes in the benthic community of a eutrophic lake following zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha) invasion
Published in Inland Waters, 2022
Michael J. Spear, Petra A. Wakker, Thomas P. Shannon, Rex L. Lowe, Lyubov E. Burlakova, Alexander Y. Karatayev, M. Jake Vander Zanden
Pillsbury et al. (2002) also reported 4-fold increases of benthic algae following zebra mussel invasion of Saginaw Bay in Lake Huron, driven largely by filamentous green algae. Benthic green algae decreased in our data from 2016 to 2018, becoming undetectable by 2018. However, our data may not fully reflect the realities of benthic green algae in Lake Mendota. Nearshore mats of filamentous green algae such as Cladophora are a common impact of zebra mussel invasion (Stević et al. 2013, Armenio et al. 2016), particularly in the Laurentian Great Lakes (Higgins et al. 2008, Barton et al. 2013). Anecdotally, large mats of detached filamentous green algae were visually commonplace along the Lake Mendota shoreline throughout our study. Overgrowth of filamentous green algae on rocks and zebra mussel druses became so conspicuous in July 2017 that we returned to one site (transect A, 1 m depth) and cut out the mat with scissors, estimating an average biomass of 2900 g m−2 wet weight (or 224 g m−2 dry weight). Our phytobenthos methods likely significantly underestimated the density of filamentous green algae, possibly because of mismatched timing between sample collection and algal mat growth as well as the difficulty of capturing large filaments in our phytobenthos subsampling and enumeration methods. Notably, Cocconeis pediculus, a diatom and common epiphyte of Cladophora (Stevenson and Stoermer 1982, Higgins et al. 2008; Supplemental Fig. S6), increased 2800%. Although we did not quantify the relationship between Cocconeis and Cladophora abundance, this 26-fold increase in a Cladophora epiphyte may be a proxy indicator of filamentous green algal growth on hard substrates, suggesting the 4-fold increase in overall phytobenthos density we observed may be an underestimation of the true response, especially among filamentous green algae taxa on hard substrates.