Rainforests Costa Rica and Beyond

Rainforests: Costa Rica and Beyond is a tour through an immensely biodiverse world, one that represents the pinnacle of evolutionary sophistication. Award-winning author Adrian Forsyth draws on four decades of personal encounters with the inhabitants of the rainforest as a starting point for communicating key ecological topics such as biodiversity, rarity, co-evolution, chemical defense, and camouflage.

The luminous photographs capture stunning and rare creatures in action, including a jaguar on the prowl, the mating ritual of the now-extinct golden toad, and a feeding hermit hummingbird. The behaviors and characteristics of the rainforest inhabitants portrayed in these images illustrate the text and advance the scientific narrative—while also exemplifying the critical importance of conservation. Thematic chapters are interspersed with four chapters devoted to specific habitats and regions of Costa Rica and Peru, areas with some of the highest diversity of plant and animal species in the world. The result is an exuberant celebration of the rainforest in text and images.

I.S.B.N. 978-0-9798804-2-1

DUE: OCTOBER 2008

Adrian Forsyth is an internationally renowned biologist, conservationist, and nature writer. He is the author of Tropical Nature, The Natural History of Sex, The Nature of Birds, and Exploring the World of Insects. He is President of the Amazon Conservation Association and a research associate at the Smithsonian Institution.

Michael Fogden and Patricia Fogden are world-acclaimed nature photographers. Since 1979, they have lived for about half of each year in Monteverde, using their home as a base for photographic expeditions throughout Costa Rica. They are the authors of Animals and their Colours and Costa Rica Wildlife of the National Parks and Reserves.

E. O. Wilson is Pellegrino University Research Professor in Entomology in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and the author most recently of The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth.

About the Author / Photographers

"The words 'tropical rainforest' may conjure up vistas populated by jaguars, brilliant macaws and flowers amidst the grandeur of towering buttressed trees. But the eager, expectant visitor is not regaled with the sight of charismatic vertebrates, gaudy birds, and luminous orchids. In the rainforest, close encounters with life that moves are usually rare but brilliant episodes; one is bedazzled for an instant and then left alone in the quiet greenery. Under such conditions, one must see the episode as part of a process; tracing the connections between organisms is the essence of rainforest appreciation."-Rainforests: Costa Rica and Beyond