Others are better adapted to survive in the shade. The forest plant life supports its animals, providing shelter and sleeping places, as well as food in the form of fruit, flowers and foliage. Plants are also responsible for driving the forest ecosystem, especially in helping to recycle vital water and nutrients. On the forest floor fungi thread their way through the thin soil, helping to break down plant and animal remains into nutrients, which can then be used again by plants. A cubic centimetre of forest soil may hold several metres of fungal threads and as many bacteria as there are people on earth.
Decomposition is so rapid on the floor that there is little accumulation of leaf litter.
On this shallow soil, many trees grow buttress roots that spread out around the base of the trunk and help hold it up. Forest destruction does not just harm a rich ecosystem, it has huge environmental effects. Locally the removal of large areas of vegetation can lead to run-off and flooding. On the global scale, forest burning puts high additional amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere , increasing the greenhouse gases and contributing to global warming. Life is richest in the canopy, where the bulk of the foliage is and where most of the plant eaters live.