It has been a very exciting year for 3-d quadrats and I have been able to establish on at the Tiputini Biodiversity Research Station in the Ecuadorian Amazon http://192.188.53.69/tiputini/, thanks to Dr Doug ZOok at Boston University SChool of Education and the Tiputini Station. The Amazon is an amazing place and the biodiversity there is truely amazing. The estimate is that in a single hectacre there are over 500 organisms, at least half of which are not duplicated in that area. Even a single limb of a tree there contains organisms not seen anywhere else on Earth. There is a joke that if you want to find a new species of plant or animal then go to the Amazon and you could potentially one a new one each day.
The 3-d quadrat that was established in the Amazon will be observed periodically during the year but revisited at least one each year by researchers. AAS you can see in this image, the Amazonian 3-d quadrat contains a kapok tree. Kapok are abundant and very important in the Amazon, as well as other ecosystems. Their buttress roots hold them up in the poor soil and provide shelter (and food) for other organisms. In another image you can see how a ficus vine as encircled a kapok tree to the point where the kapok was strangled and died, leaving only the ficus (strangling fig) - shot from inside the ficus looking up.
The Amazon is an amazing place and the observations from the 3-d quadrat placed there will be very interesting, though
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