Birds In The Amazon Rainforest – As the Academy celebrates biodiversity—the amazing and beautiful tapestry of life on Earth—this year, we explore some of the fascinating places our scientists have visited across the region and around the world to study and protect our planet’s phenomenal and wondrous diversity. species.
Few places inspire biodiversity like the Amazon rainforest, an area in South America that covers just 0.5% of the Earth’s land mass, yet contains a disproportionately staggering 10% of known species diversity. About 1,300 species of birds call the Amazon rainforest their home, as well as more than 3,000 species of fish and countless primates, butterflies, orchids, frogs and more.
Birds In The Amazon Rainforest
In some places, the Amazon rainforest is one of the last truly wild places left, with only minimal signs of the industrialized world – although this is changing rapidly. How the Amazon amassed this impressive list of organisms remains one of the great mysteries of modern biology, still debated by scientists from many disciplines.
Facts About The Amazon Rainforest
The region also has a major impact on the rest of the planet. According to some estimates, the Amazon rainforest contains 13% of the total
Of trees on the planet – making it one of the most important carbon sinks on Earth. Its vegetation stores 120 billion tons of carbon in its stems, leaves, branches, and twigs—albeit reduced from historical storage—but still an impressive number indeed. In addition, studies have shown that the Amazon rainforest creates its own climate that can affect other regions in the Pacific Northwest of North America.
The Amazon rainforest is the longest river on Earth, it rises high in the Andes as a result of melting glaciers, and then crosses the entire continent and flows into the Atlantic Ocean. The Amazon Basin consists of a complex interconnected network of tributaries that carry more water than the next seven major river basins combined.
This river network has a known impact on some Amazonian birds and primates. Large rivers like this—about ten kilometers long at their widest point—can isolate populations of these species, which then diverge on either side to form new species. Indeed, entire communities of organisms are known to occur uniquely in these rivers, a pattern known to indigenous groups in the region long before the arrival of Europeans.
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Academic and postdoctoral ornithologist Lucas Mosher, Ph.D., recently led a scientific expedition to the relatively small Roosevelt River to investigate the effects of these bodies of water on the genetics of various bird species in the region. The group recently published a paper on their findings, which is also covered
Almost a hundred years earlier, the river’s cousin, Teddy Roosevelt, along with Brazilian statesman Candido Mariano da Silva Rondón and a team of men, charted the river to find where the Amazon meets during the infamous months that nearly cost Roosevelt. life.
Mosher’s expedition was not as strenuous as Teddy’s, but it rewarded the researchers with new scientific discoveries. By collecting samples of rare birds from both sides of the Roosevelt River, they found evidence that different bird species can be nearly identical on both sides of the river, but their genetics suggest they are different.
). Gray warblers are small birds – no longer than 4 centimeters from head to tail – that feed on a variety of arthropods as they forage in mixed flocks in the heart of the forest. As a result of this fieldwork, Mosher and his colleagues discovered that they were actually different on both sides of the Roosevelt River.
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Mosher and his team discovered a second subspecies of the Antwerp gray (Myrmotherula menetriesii) that remains on opposite banks of the Roosevelt River, a species previously not known to distinguish between the two sides. East coast populations have gray throats, while west coast populations have black throats.
Harpy eagles, like this immature bird from the Chuco forests of Ecuador, are voracious predators that eat wounded mammals like monkeys and sloths. They live in the Amazon rainforest and are strong flyers, easily crossing rivers, unlike many smaller birds found in the lower and middle tiers.
), another species found in the southern Amazon rainforest from Peru to the mouth of the Amazon River. Mosher’s group compared the genomes of these birds from both sides of the river and found that, like the ants, they evolved separately on opposite banks, although they show relatively little difference in their plumage.
Amazon kingfishers (Onychorhynchus coronata) are a common species found in the Amazon rainforest. When attacked, they display a large red (male) or orange (female) symbol, as seen here.
Beautiful Birds In The Amazon Rainforest
Moser says, “Many immediately wonder: if birds can fly, why can’t rivers fly, especially small ones like the Roosevelt River? According to him, the answer is very simple. Although many species of birds fly across the largest rivers with little effort, like the mighty predatory harpy, many
Rainforest bird species are poor flyers. These birds know their limitations and often don’t like to come out of the woods to cross large stretches of moving water. Various scientific studies have shown that this is so.
Scientific understanding of how rivers affect biodiversity is changing rapidly and the debate continues. When these rivers change course over tens or hundreds of thousands of years, they can affect the evolution of birds and other species.
“The more we learn about Amazonian species, the more we realize how little is known,” says Mosher. In the southern Amazon, including near the Roosevelt River, scientists continue to discover new species and genetically diverse populations of animals and plants.
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Unfortunately, the southern Amazon rainforest is also at the center of deforestation in the region. As the forest is cut down, burned and converted for agricultural purposes such as cattle ranching and soy production, the countless unique and spectacular species found there and nowhere else are increasingly threatened with extinction.
Understanding, appreciating and preserving biological diversity has been at the center of the Academy’s scientific endeavors since its founding in 1812. With 19 million specimens and counting, our collections are not only a window into the past, but also a key tool for measuring the present. and the future health of all species on Earth.
As we take our understanding of the natural world from the lab to city hall and beyond to be a force for nature together. Manu Jungle Birds, with new species discovered every year. Predators of megafauna often get the most attention, but the birds of the Amazonian Manu rainforest are worth the trip alone. These are not your everyday bird watchers sights, no. The Amazon is a place for bird lovers to see some of the world’s most unique creatures in their natural habitat, some completely unique in their location.
One of the greatest wildlife shows on Earth takes place every day in the Amazon, where thousands of macaws congregate on the mudflats along parts of the Amazon River. Whether you’re a bird lover or not, the Amazon’s rich selection of beautiful feathered friends is sure to brighten up anyone’s Amazon vacation.
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There are more than 1,300 species of birds in the Amazon rainforest. This incredible number makes up a third of the world’s bird species! About 30 birds are endemic to the area, and many Amazonian birds migrate, either wintering or passing through the rainforest at certain times of the year.
In 1982, the record for the most bird species seen at one site in 24 hours was set at the Kocha Kashu Biological Station in Manus National Park, when LSU researcher Ted Parker and Princeton graduate student Scott Robinson spotted 331 species. In one area of the Peruvian Amazon, in only 5,500 dunes of rainforest, about 575 species of birds have been identified. In comparison, there are 700 species of birds across North America.
Its proximity to the equator and its size give the Amazon rainforest a wide range of tropical climates. The different climates throughout the region are suitable for many creatures, from hot and humid in the north and cold and wet in the center to temperate and dry in the south, with different species of birds living in each climate.
Tropical rainforests also have many layers in their structure, providing many homes for birds and their predators such as insects and rodents. The high canopy is ideal for birds, the middle layers of the forest for rodents, and the ground grasses and bushes for insects.
Amazon Rainforest And Birds向量圖形及更多雨林圖片 雨林, 鳥, 地圖 Istock
The Amazon’s proximity to the Andes, the longest mountain range in the world, and the tropical Andean biodiversity of unknown plant species provide great nesting opportunities and an abundance of berries and insects, plenty of food and shelter.