Eckholm, Eric
Eric Eckholm is Deputy science and health editor of The New York Times.
Perhaps two-thirds of the rain-forest species live aloft; many plants and animals are born, reproduce and live their entire lives without ever touching the ground. Secrets of the Rain Forest, 1988.At first, the jungle seems to offer little more than a hundred shades of green. Ibid.
Most of the world's 20,000 species of orchids live on the trunks or branches of tropical trees. Ibid.
Much of the action in the canopy revolves around the sex lives of plants., the foundation of the ecosystem. Ibid.
The plant must entice a creature not only to pick up some pollen but also to deliver it to a member of its own species. For this, a bird that flies randomly from flower to flower won't do. Instead, astonishingly specific physical features and interdependencies between plants and animals have developed, in a process known as coevolution. Ibid.