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Animal Sciences Commons

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Plant Sciences

SIT Graduate Institute/SIT Study Abroad

Series

2022

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Animal Sciences

Hummingbird Diversity, Abundance, And Feeding Interactions Across Three Floral Communities On Mount Totumas, Chiriquí, Panamá, Zachary Ginn Oct 2022

Hummingbird Diversity, Abundance, And Feeding Interactions Across Three Floral Communities On Mount Totumas, Chiriquí, Panamá, Zachary Ginn

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

(Trochilidae) are a large Neotropical bird family of nectar-feeders that have evolved as pollinators of many Neotropical plants. Interactions between hummingbirds and plants form mutualistic networks that may change in structure over environmental and anthropogenic gradients. While the unique dynamics of hummingbird diversity and floral interactions have been studied throughout the Neotropics, differing drivers between locations emphasizes the need for further local research. This deficit is especially crucial in biodiverse and understudied locations like the Western Highlands of Panamá. In this study, I investigated how hummingbird diversity, abundance, and floral interactions differed between Cloud Forest, Garden, and Oak Forest on …


Arthropod Assemblages At The Intersection Of Epiphyte And Soil Habitats: An Assessment Of Understory Level Nonvascular Epiphyte Communities And Their Connectivity Within A Tropical Montane Rainforest, David “Max” Jones Oct 2022

Arthropod Assemblages At The Intersection Of Epiphyte And Soil Habitats: An Assessment Of Understory Level Nonvascular Epiphyte Communities And Their Connectivity Within A Tropical Montane Rainforest, David “Max” Jones

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Canopy arthropods communities represent a disproportionate amount of global species richness (Stuntz 2001). Understanding arthropod composition and connectivity of lower epiphyte communities is important in understanding how canopy arthropods communities are formed and will respond to change (Floren and Linsenmair 1998). As such this study examined arthropod assemblages living within nonvascular epiphyte communities (epiphyte mats) living directly upon lower trunk regions of 24 trees in a tropical montane rain forest within the Santa Lucia Nature Reserve in Pichincha, Ecuador. Trees were assessed for size, epiphyte diversity, and epiphyte coverage before arthropod sampling within the epiphyte mats. Soil assessments were taken …