A misty rain forest canopy in central Amazonia.

The central Amazon Basin is home to some of the most biologically diverse forests in the world. These rain forests are being reduced and fragmented at a fast rate (as of 2004, about 24 million hectares per year), and the effects of habitat loss and fragmentation on these ecosystems is still poorly understood. This is especially true for long-lived species such as trees. The proliferation of fast-growing successional tress and correlated decline of old growth trees are predicted to have important effects on species composition, forest dynamics, carbon storage, and nutrient cycling in fragmented rain forests. This photograph originally appeared on the cover of Ecology (87:2) in February of 2006.