WILDLIFE

Rainforest Insects and other Invertebrates

Most people dislike creepy-crawlies; many find insects and spiders repulsive, scary, or simply uninteresting. Your visit to the rainforest will change your point of view! You can appreciate the exquisite color and form of butterflies and moths along with the beauty of invertebrates (creatures without a backbone) and the interrelationship between insects and other rainforest organisms, especially plants. Recent studies of rainforest canopies indicate that there could be as many as 30 million insect species. More than half of every living thing that exists on the planet is an insect (compare to mammals, at a mere 4%). Insects recycle nutrients, maintain soil structure and fertility, pollinate plants, disperse seeds, control populations of other organisms and are a major food source for birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, other insects…even carnivorous plants. However, we know more about rocks on the moon than about forest insects. Even though we may sometimes wish that there were no mosquitos and the like, we have to understand that without them and other insects life on earth would quickly collapse to simple plants and microbes and the rainforest would not exist.