Abstract
T he cage like, steel gondola lofted by a construction crane swings slowly next to rhe 30meter-high crown of anAnacardium excelsum tree. Purpie flowers from an immense network of vines cover bright green crown. The flowers teem with colorful animals: bees, hummingbirds, butterflies, beetles, and day-flying moths. A meter-long iguana creeps along a nearby branch. All around A. excelsum are orher species of trees, also draped wirh vines, known 35 lianas. The plants come in a wide variety of sizes, shapes, and orientations rhat aid them in their competition for light. is a frontier of discovery, says Stephen S. Mulkey, a plant ecologist with ehe University of Missouri at St. Louis and a research associate of Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama. makes you wonder why we spent so much time in understory, when action is up here. S. joseph Wright, an STRI research biologist. stands next to Mulkey in gondola, noting crane's ability to put researchers faceto-face with canopy plants and insects. Previously, we'd basically been standing on floor, looking up, or just ignoring what's up here, says Wright. For six years, STRI biologists have conducted crane-based research on what they refer to as the business end of tropical forest-'-the upper canopy. This top layer of leaves and branches is a living boundary between atmosphere and a sea of diverse life. It is a boundary where
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