The Ornaments of Life

Coevolution and Conservation in the Tropics

Theodore H. Fleming, W. John Kress

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780226253411, 9780226253404
• eBook ISBN: 9780226023328
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Botany
• Index: Biological Sciences

The average kilometer of tropical rainforest is teeming with life; it contains thousands of species of plants and animals. As The Ornaments of Life reveals, many of the most colorful and eye-catching rainforest inhabitants—toucans, monkeys, leaf-nosed bats, and hummingbirds to name a few—are an important component of the infrastructure that supports life in the forest. These fruit-and-nectar eating birds and mammals pollinate the flowers and disperse the seeds of hundreds of tropical plants, and unlike temperate communities, much of this greenery relies exclusively on animals for reproduction.

            Synthesizing recent research by ecologists and evolutionary biologists, Theodore H. Fleming and W. John Kress demonstrate the tremendous functional and evolutionary importance of these tropical pollinators and frugivores. They shed light on how these mutually symbiotic relationships evolved and lay out the current conservation status of these essential species. In order to illustrate the striking beauty of these "ornaments" of the rainforest, the authors have included a series of breathtaking color plates and full-color graphs and diagrams.  

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• 1. The Scope of This Book
• 2. Patterns of Regional and Community Diversity
• 3. The Resource Base
• 4. Pollen and Seed Dispersal and Their Ecological and Genetic Consequences
• 5. Macroevolutionary Consequences of Pollen and Seed Dispersal
• 6. Phylogeny and Biogeography of These Mutualisms
• 7. The Pollination Mutualism
• 8. The Frugivory Mutualism
• 9. Synthesis and Conclusions about the Ecology and Evolution of Vertebrate-Angiosperm Mutualisms
• 10. The Future of Vertebrate-Angiosperm Mutualisms
• Appendix 1: Overview of the Major Families of Plants containing Species That Are Pollinated or Dispersed by Birds or Mammals
• Appendix 2: Overview of the Major Families of Plants containing Species That Are Pollinated or Dispersed by Birds or Mammals
• References
• Species Index
• Subject Index