Rainforests are the most biologically diverse of all terrestrial habitats, and the number of different species in just a small plot of forest can be huge. For the interested amateur, identifying the myriad of rainforest plants and animals can be challenging! We don’t know exactly how many species of plants and animals live in the rainforests of the Queensland Wet Tropics – for some groups e.g.fungi, some insect families, there may actually be more undescribed species than ones that have been formally identified. It is likely that during a short 15 min walk along Paluma rainforest tracks you could be passing several hundred different species of plants and animals. Some of these are large and conspicuous while others could require much closer inspection (and perhaps a hand lens) to identify.
Paluma is located at the southern end of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area. The WTWHA contains at least 663 vertebrate animal species, and invertebrate fauna is the richest in Australia. Land snails alone are represented by 222 species. It is estimated that the Wet Tropics probably has around 40,000 species of insect, including 230 butterfly species and 135 dung beetle species. Plant diversity is equally remarkable with 2,800 species of vascular plants – 700 of which are only found in the region[1].
All this seems very impressive but it leaves the casual visitor somewhat overwhelmed – to the point where any interest in identifying species can be lost in the enormity of the task.
The purpose of this series of posts is to enable even the most casual and inexperienced visitor to identify the five most common and distinctive species from each of 10 or so groups of plants and animals. By breaking the task down in to 5 easy species from each group a weekend visitor with a keen interest in the task might become familiar with 10 or 20 different rainforest species, and after a few such visits might claim knowledge of 50 or more species!
We will start with one of the easiest groups (birds) and then move on to other groups that may require a little more effort and patience. By the end of this series we hope to have compiled an online and downloadable guide to the 50 most common and easily identified species around Paluma village.
[1] https://www.wettropics.gov.au/biodiversity , https://www.wettropics.gov.au/insects
Still to come:
- Insects & Spiders
- Other plants