Amazon Rainforest

About the Amazon Rainforest

The Amazon is the largest rainforest on the planet and holds more species than any comparable area of land anywhere. Its structure is layered — forest floor, understorey, canopy and the emergent trees standing above everything else — and each layer supports a different community, so a single hectare stacks several habitats on top of one another. The river system matters as much as the trees. Seasonal flooding pushes water many kilometres into the forest, and fish swim among trunks eating fruit and dispersing seeds, a relationship found almost nowhere else. Much of the diversity comes from specialisation: species that depend on one plant, one pool of water held in a bromeliad, or one narrow band of altitude. That specialisation is also what makes the system so exposed to fragmentation.