{"id":883,"date":"2014-02-14T11:45:33","date_gmt":"2014-02-14T16:45:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nybg.org\/science-talk\/?p=883"},"modified":"2014-02-14T11:58:04","modified_gmt":"2014-02-14T16:58:04","slug":"an-expedition-to-tafelberg-a-host-of-habitats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2014\/02\/an-expedition-to-tafelberg-a-host-of-habitats\/","title":{"rendered":"An Expedition to Tafelberg: A Host of Habitats"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fabian A. Michelangeli, Ph.D.<\/a>, is an Associate Curator of the Institute of Systematic Botany at The New York Botanical Garden<\/a>. His research focuses in part on the evolution, identification, and classification of neotropical plants. This is the last of four posts<\/a> about an expedition last year to Suriname in northeastern South America.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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Julian Aguirre and Mani collecting aquatic plants in Arrowhead Basin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Rain, isolation, and a unique geology, all factors that I have referred to in previous posts about Tafelberg<\/a>, play\u00a0very important roles in the amount of biodiversity\u00a0on the summit of the mountain. However, another important factor is the great variety\u00a0of\u00a0environments on the summit, whose flat surface is the reason its name is Dutch for “table mountain.”<\/p>\n

The top of Tafelberg is a very large, roughly triangular\u00a0plateau.\u00a0It measures about nine miles long by six miles wide and covers an area of some\u00a030 square miles. The surface of the plateau looked homogenous as we approached the summit in the helicopter, but it\u00a0quickly became clear upon landing that\u00a0we would be able to explore many different vegetation types. Large areas of the summit are covered by tall forests filled with\u00a0a close relative of the rubber tree.\u00a0A network of small creeks crisscrosses the summit,\u00a0creating hundreds of \u201cislands.\u201d
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\nAlso common on the summit are open areas, usually surrounded by dwarf forests or shrubs,\u00a0where a small amount of water flows over the rocks and sand. These areas are particularly rich in carnivorous plants and many species found only on the summit. The black-water rivers of the summit are also the habitat for many aquatic plants; the black or reddish color of the water here is the product of the forests’ decomposing leaf litter, which makes the water rich in tannins.<\/p>\n

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Lastly, the apparently flat summit is really fractured by many canyons and tall walls that form\u00a0unique habitats, usually very shady and humid, that are\u00a0home to many plants\u00a0found only on the summit of the mountain. These “endemic” species are of particular interest to botanists because several of them are likely to be new species that no one has documented. And because their range is so limited, they are also likely to be the species most at risk of extinction if their habitat is disrupted by climate change or other threats.<\/p>\n

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Geijkes Creek<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After almost two weeks of exploring a great variety of environments on Tafelberg, my graduate student Julian Aguirre and I were able to collect almost 300 plant samples.\u00a0Our colleagues collecting aquatic insects, fish, and frogs were equally successful. To end\u00a0our journey, we\u00a0flew first by helicopter to the Kappel airstrip, then by small plane to Paramaribo and finally to New York. But in a way, the real journey is\u00a0only just starting as we begin the long and interesting process of identifying all of the samples collected during our explorations.<\/p>\n

The expedition to Tafelberg was funded by a grant to University of Kansas entomologist Andrew Short from the National Geographic Society.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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