ENVS200 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Soil Structure, Phiomia, African Elephant
Document Summary
Natural history is the study of how organisms in a particular area are influenced by factors such as climate, soils, predators, competitors, mutualists, and evolutionary history. A solid understanding of natural history provides the foundation for modern ecology and conservation biology. One of the most dramatic restoration successes that depended upon understanding both natural history and ecology comes from costa rica. Daniel janzen"s goal was to restore tropical dry forest to guanacaste national park. The guanacaste tree, a member of the pea family, produces disk-shaped fruit about 10 cm in diameter and 4 to 10 mm thick. Each year, a large tree produces up to 5,000 of these fruits, which fall to the ground when ripe. His answer was that the fruit of the tree should promote seed dispersal by animals. A guanacaste tree, enterolobium cyclocarpum, growing in costa rica. Guanacaste trees, which produce large amounts of edible fruit, require large herbivores to disperse their seeds.
