Many of Australia's tropical rivers are amongst the most ecologically intact in the world, but have been relatively little studied. Now, however, there is pressure for further development of these tropical land and water resources. To avoid repeating management mistakes that have been made elsewhere, it is essential to improve our understanding of how these rivers function. As part of the Tropi...

Much of this series has covered the weather types experienced in the tropics. Following on from the introduction to tropical climates in Part 1 (Galvin, 2007), this penultimate part describes the major climates and their relationship to the plants and animals of the tropics, including humankind, that have settled in all tropical environments. A map of the climatic zones of the tropics appears a...

The decline of atmospheric CO2 over the last 65 million years (Ma) resulted in the 'CO2-starvation' of terrestrial ecosystems and led to the widespread distribution of C4 plants, which are less sensitive to CO2 levels than are C3 plants. Global expansion of C4 biomass is recorded in the diets of mammals from Asia, Africa, North America, and South America during the interval from about 8 to 5 Ma...

BACKGROUND Most tropical and subtropical plants are biotically pollinated, and insects are the major pollinators. A small but ecologically and economically important group of plants classified in 28 orders, 67 families and about 528 species of angiosperms are pollinated by nectar-feeding bats. From a phylogenetic perspective this is a derived pollination mode involving a relatively large and en...

This research used knowledge of the indigenous practice of timing nontimber forest product harvest with the full moon to demonstrate that chemicals controlling the decomposition rate of foliage fluctuate with the lunar cycle and may have developed as a result of plant-herbivore interactions. Indigenous knowledge suggests that leaves harvested during the full moon are more durable. Palm leaves h...

Although several per cent of net carbon assimilation can be re-released as isoprene emissions to the atmosphere by many tropical plants, much uncertainty remains regarding its biological significance. In a previous study, we detected emissions of isoprene and its oxidation products methyl vinyl ketone (MVK) and methacrolein (MACR) from tropical plants under high temperature/light stress, sugges...

Species distributions are limited by a complex array of abiotic and biotic factors. In general, abiotic (climatic) factors are thought to explain species' broad geographic distributions, while biotic factors regulate species' abundance patterns at local scales. We used species distribution models to test the hypothesis that a biotic interaction with a tree, the Colombian oak (Quercus humboldtii...

Plant-animal interactions occur in a community context of dynamic and complex ecological interactive networks. The understanding of who interacts with whom is a basic information, but the outcomes of interactions among associates are fundamental to draw valid conclusions about the functional structure of the network. Ecological networks studies in general gave little importance to know the true...

BACKGROUND It is thought that mast seeding is a rare reproductive strategy in the tropics, since tropical climates are less variable, and fruit consumers tend to be more generalist in these regions. However, previous tests of this hypothesis were based on only few tropical datasets, and none from tropical South America. Moreover, reproductive strategies have been quantified based on the coeffic...

The research is based on the unique collections of tropical and subtropical plants MBG. Phytosanitary monitoring was carried out in laboratory «Tropical Subtropical plants»: Orangery, glass greenhouse Korean greenhouse. As a result phytosanitary complex MBG, next pests were identified: Trialeyrodes vaporariorum Westw.; Pseudococcus affinis Mask.; Diaspis boisduvalii Sign.; Tetranychus urticae L...