Species Spotlight
This famous cloud forest bird has a bright red belly and a long, colorful tail. It is often called the most beautiful bird in the Americas and lives in the Monteverde Reserve.
What is the Resplendent Quetzal?
This type of non-native plant or animal is brought into the cloud forest from somewhere else and starts taking over, pushing out species that naturally live there.
What is an Invasive Species?
In the cloud forest, moisture from passing clouds settles on leaves and drips to the ground. This process can provide more than half of the forest's total water supply and is called this.
What is Fog Drip?
The Resplendent Quetzal eats wild fruit whole and later drops the seeds in its waste as it flies around. This helps new trees grow in different parts of the forest.
What is Seed Dispersal?
This well known private nature reserve in Costa Rica was created in 1972 and protects over 10,000 cloud forests. It is one of the most visited ecological reserves in the world.
What is the Monteverde Cloud Forest?
This large spotted wild cat is the biggest predator in Costa Rica's cloud forests. It hunts deer, tapirs, and peccaries and mostly comes out at night.
What is the Jaguar?
When farms near cloud forests spray pesticides and fertilizers, rain washes these chemicals into streams and rivers. This is one of the main ways farms cause this type of harm to cloud forest water sources.
What is Water Pollution
When trees release water vapor into the air through their leaves, it rises and helps form new clouds above the forest. This is a key reason why forests help create their own rainfall.
What is Transpiration?
Some cloud forest frogs skip the tadpole stage completely. Instead, fully formed baby frogs hatch directly from eggs laid in moist leaf litter or bromeliads. This is called ___ development.
What is Direct Development?
Costa Rica has a program where the government pays farmers and landowners money in exchange for keeping their land forested instead of clearing it. This helped the country double its forest cover after 1983.
What is the Payment for Environmental Services Program?
This plant grows on tree branches without needing soil. It absorbs water and nutrients from the air and rain. Orchids, mosses, and ferns are all examples found in Costa Rican cloud forests.
What is an Epiphyte?
This worldwide issue is causing temperatures to rise, which pushes the cool, misty cloud forest zone higher up the mountain. As it moves up, the total area of cloud forest keeps shrinking.
What is Climate Change?
Underground, cloud forest tree roots are connected by a web of fungal threads that pass nutrients and water between trees. Scientists sometimes call this the wood wide web.
What is the Mycorrhizal Network?
This cloud forest bird has one of the loudest calls of any bird in the world. The male makes a sharp metallic sound to attract females across the dense forest canopy.
What is the Three-Wattled Bellbird?
Researchers place recording devices in the cloud forest and leave them running for weeks to track which species are present by listening to their calls. This method of monitoring wildlife is called ___.
What is Acoustic Monitoring?
This slow-moving mammal hangs upside down from tree branches in the cloud forest. It moves so slowly that green algae actually grows on its fur.
What is the Sloth?
When trees are cut down in or near the cloud forest to make room for farms or development, animals lose their homes and plant communities fall apart. This is considered the biggest historical threat to Costa Rican biodiversity.
What is Deforestation?
Costa Rica's cloud forests are found at this general elevation range, where it is cool and misty enough for clouds to settle among the trees on most days.
What is 1,500 to 2,500 meters above sea level?
At night, when temperatures in the cloud forest drop significantly, some hummingbirds lower their body temperature and slow their heartbeat way down to save energy. This state is called ___.
What is Torpor?
When patches of cloud forest are separated by farms or roads, animals cannot move between them to find mates or food. Strips of natural vegetation that connect these patches are called ___.
What are Wildlife Corridors?
This small, colorful frog found in Costa Rican cloud forests has a completely see-through belly that lets you see its heart and organs from the outside.
What is the Glass Frog
This deadly skin fungus spread through the frog trade has wiped out dozens of amphibian species worldwide, including the Golden Toad, which was last seen in Monteverde in 1989.
What is Chytridiomycosis?
In a cloud forest, different plants and animals live at different heights, from the forest floor to the very top of the tallest trees. Each of these height zones is called a ___.
What is a Forest Layer?
The jaguar has a spotted coat that helps it blend into the patches of light and shadow on the cloud forest floor. This type of coloring that helps animals hide is called ___.
What is Camouflage?
Things like clean water, fresh air and carbon storage are all things that cloud forests provide to people for free. People group these free benefits under this term to show forests have real monetary value.
What are Ecosystem Services?