Resumo de Rainforest City

Extraordinary diversity
A patch of tropical rainforest has twice the number of mammal species, five times the bats and birds and ten times the types of tree than an identical sized patch of temperate forest. Explaining this diversity is extremely difficult, but much of the answer lies in the unique complexity, productivity and dynamism of the place. These three features have simultaneously fed upon each other to erect and populate the equivalent of vast, buzzing metropolises in the living world.
In fact, the more we look at the rainforest, the more we see parallels with a city. Just like a city, the rainforest has 'guilds' - groups that share a common livelihood. Where the city may have guilds of locksmiths and fishmongers, the rainforest has guilds of understorey nectar-eaters and emergent epiphytes.
Employment options
And, just as a large city offers more employment opportunities than a small town, the rainforest has significantly more guilds than other habitats. This is partly due to its more complex structure - the fact that there is an understorey means species can find a livelihood in the understorey - but the rainforest is also effectively open all year and so it offers employment that is simply not available in other habitats.
A deckchair attendant in Britain has to do odd jobs in the winter, but in Thailand it's a year-round occupation. Similarly, no animal can be just a seed-eater in an oak forest, because acorns only fall in autumn. In the rainforest, seeds are always falling from the canopy, and so seed-eating is a legitimate profession - it has its own guild. Similarly, due to the year-round demand in cities, specialists such as carpet-cleaners, copywriters and couriers can thrive, while in a small town, they are absent.
Booming economy
The rainforest 'job market' is also enormous as a result of its permanently booming 'economy'. In nature, energy is the currency, and the incredible productivity of the rainforest ensures that there's always enough of it around to enable millions of species to live side by side. And, to avoid competition, natural selection has made sure that, even within a guild there are tiny differences in the diets, habitats or behaviours of each member.
The rainforest could therefore be regarded as a vast association of specialists, a community of animals and plants that ply their own very particular trade. In insects, the specialisation is extreme. Most live on only one or two species of plant. One tree in Panama was found to have 163 species of beetle that were exclusive to that type of tree.
Most rainforest plants protect their leaves with poisons. In order to eat a plant's leaves, the insects have to evolve to become tolerant to its particular cocktail of toxins. After thousands of years, most herbivorous insects are committed to living on their host plant alone.

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