Ecotasia's video: Botany and Plant Ecology of the Amazon Rainforest

Learn about the Plants and Plant Communities of the Amazon Rainforest. Plants are kind of the most important things on earth, as they are the basis of every terrestrial ecosystem, and make all sorts of neat things like air and food nutrients which you know we need to live. But like appreciating plants and not just seeing a green background can be hard because it can be easy to miss the forest through the trees, while also missing the trees in the forest and so instead of being confused by the amorphous tangle of plant life you would rather just get distracted by birds, monkeys or something, but i also guess it can be hard to appreciate and talk about plants because the study of plants, botany can be a little intimidating with all its very specific vocabulary, and because you have all this plant taxonomy, morphology, ecology, cell biology, and biochemistry. I myself have only a passing understanding of botany, which is why I wanted to create a video as a remedial lesson on botany and plant communities. But such a video needs the right setting, and what setting could be better than the Amazon Rainforest, arguably the most famous forest on Earth, home to countless animals, fungi, and plants. In this part of the rainforest in South-eastern Peru we are in the Southwest Amazon moist forest ecoregion, home to the highest biodiversity of birds and mammals in the entire Amazon basin, but we are going to forget about all those motile critters, because we are here to talk about the plants. In this video I will be going over some basic botanical physiology and ecology, discussing different plant communities in the Amazon from the flooded Varzea to Terra Firme, a few interesting plants, the basic vocabulary of plant morphology, and how plants defend themselves from herbivores. Disclaimer: My extremely brief discussion of Mental Health in relation to Vincent Van Gogh and terpenes is far too brief, and does not appropriately go over mental health and the myth that terpenes gave Van Gogh, and understand if viewers dislike my brief flashing of text on the topic, I find a block of text I cannot completely read in the time allotted pretty compelling and cause me to pause the video, but mental health is probably not the place to start that on my channel. I would like to say my discussion of the Brazil nut was derived from how Dr Cristian Tirapelle described it to me. 0:00 Introduction 2:00 Plant Communities of The Amazon Rainforest 12:55 Plant Morphology 16:28 Plant Defenses 23:17 Saving the Amazon Rainforest Sources 1. Phillips, O. L., Sullivan, M. J., Baker, T. R., Monteagudo Mendoza, A., Vargas, P. N., & Vásquez, R. (2019). Species matter: Wood density influences tropical forest biomass at multiple scales. Surveys in Geophysics, 40(4), 913–935. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10712-019-09540-0 2. Goldsmith, Gregory; Zahawi, Rakan (September–December 2007). "The function of stilt roots in the growth strategy of Socratea exorrhiza (Arecaceae) at two neotropical sites"(PDF). Revista de Biología Tropical. 55 (3–4): 787–793. ISSN 0034-7744. PMID 19086384 3.Nutting, W. L.; Blum, M. S.; Fales, H. M. (1974). "Behavior of the North American Termite, Tenuirostritermes tenuirostris, with Special Reference to the Soldier Frontal Gland Secretion, Its Chemical Composition, and Use in Defense". Psyche. 81 (1): 167–177. doi:10.1155/1974/13854. 4. Van Soest, Peter J. (1982). Nutritional ecology of the ruminant: ruminant metabolism, nutritional strategies, the cellulolytic fermentation, and the chemistry of forages and plant fibers. Corvallis, Oregon: O & B Books. ISBN 978-0-9601586-0-7. 5. Huang, T., Jander, G., & de Vos, M. (2011). Non-protein amino acids in plant defense against insect herbivores: Representative cases and opportunities for further functional analysis. Phytochemistry, 72(13), 1531–1537. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.phytochem.2011.03.019 This video makes use of Original Footage, along with approriated pubilic domain music and images, especially chemical structures from wikipedia, because Tanic acid is far to large to try it in my typical style. I try to achieve the most well researched content I can, that said it is impossible to create content that is exhaustive on a given topic and therefore I implore you to investigate a given topic further. Welcome to Ecotasia! On this channel you can find wildlife footage and short documentaries on the natural world. I am an early career biologist who was inspired by the likes of the BBC Natural History unit, PBS, and Animal Planet as a child and then more recently by various nature YouTube channels to share my love for animals and nature. My goal is to document and highlight the interesting ecology and behavior of organisms I encounter, as well as cover and elucidate conservation and biological topics. Please Subscribe so you can join me to marvel and to learn twice a month.