Jungle Floor Sunlight

It is actually rather the opposite.

Jungle floor sunlight.

Only two percent of sunlight gets through the thick canopy trees and understory plants to reach the forest floor. All the familiar big game wildlife like elephants rhinos tapirs gaur tigers leopards sun bear wild boar wild dogs etc roam the forest floor but it takes a lot of luck to encounter most of them. The gap enables sunlight to reach the forest floor and fuel the rapid growth of small trees. The tropical rainforest has dense vegetation often forming three different layers the canopy the understory and the ground layer.

Rain forests are divided into layers or stories. Though tarzan movies would have us think otherwise there is actually relatively little vegetation on the rainforest floor. Large leafed shrubs and saplings new trees grow in the patches of sunlight. Aside from some seedlings young creeping vines and scattered fallen leaves the ground is relatively bare.

There is so little sunlight on the rainforest floor that very few plants grow there but there are animals that love the decaying plant matter that can be found. Gorillas are herbivores that move throughout the dark dense rainforest as well as more sun dappled swamps and jungles. The researchers found that the rainforest structure stems from what happens after a tall tree falls and creates a gap in the canopy. In a dense forest the canopy trees can block out over 95 of the sunlight.

Their droppings disperse seeds in these sunny areas where new trees and shrubs can take root. Thus leaves on plants growing in tropical rainforests are often arranged at different angles so that they receive enough sunlight to perform photosynthesis effectively. The floor of the rainforest is the richest ecosystem on earth. The trees in colombia s rain forest form a where the vegetation is so dense that sunlight rarely reaches the jungle floor.

In this way gorillas are keystone species in many african rainforest ecosystems. Hugo chavez adopted new to help end poverty illiteracy and hunger in venezuela. Little sunlight penetrates below the canopy layer in the rainforest due to the dense growth of plants. Over time the trees crowns grow to fill the gap until the point where not all of the trees can fit in the sunlit patch.

The canopy not only blocks out sunlight but dampens wind and rain so much so that a visitor to the rainforest may not immediately know it is raining because raindrops are deflected and collected by various canopy plants.