Amazonian trees
by Chris, 4 January, 2014, 1 comments
The Amazonian forests are estimated to be home to some 390 billion trees, and some 16,000 different tree species. The Amazon Basin includes bits of Peru, Brazil, the Guiana Shield and Columbia. However, it has recently been estimated* that 227 species make up half of these billions of trees. That is 1.4% of the total species count make up 50% of the trees.
The 227 species identified as ‘hyper-dominants’ seem to have no obvious physical / special features (such as seed mass or wood density), and they range from shade tolerant climax species (with large seeds) to smaller seeded, shade-intolerant pioneer types (those that colonise clearings initially). Read more...
