Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Study Area — Barro Colorado Island

2003; Springer Nature; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-3-662-05259-4_3

2196-971X

Rainer Wirth, Hubert Herz, Ronald J. Ryel, Wolfram Beyschlag, Bert Hölldobler,

Botany, Ecology, and Taxonomy Studies

The present study was performed on Barro Colorado Island (BCI) in the Republic of Panama (Plate 1; Fig. 7). Located about mid-way (9°09′N, 79°51′W) between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans, the island lies within an artificial lake (Lake Gatun) created by impounding the Rio Chagres during construction of the Panama Canal between 1911 and 1914. Like various other islands, BCI is high land which was isolated from the surrounding terrain as the lake filled. The island covers an area of 1564 ha. and, due to the numerous bays, a shoreline of 65 km. Located on a central plateau, the highest point on the island is 171 m above mean sea level and 140 m above the shoreline. The relief of the island appears very irregular, consisting of gentle hills traversed by gorges and steep slopes. The island is well drained by small watercourses and creeks. BCI was declared a nature reserve in 1923 shortly after its isolation and since 1946 it has been under the administration of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) which operates a modern field station on the northeastern shore. Due to decades of research activities, BCI is probably the most thoroughly studied piece of tropical rainforest in the world (Leigh and Wright 1990).