The Tapir's Morning Bath
Subtitle: Mysteries of the Tropical Rain Forest and the Scientists Who Are Trying to Solve Them
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Published: September 26, 2001
Language: eng
Number of pages: 328
ISBN-13: 9780395979976
First sentence: GATUN LAKE, the enormous midsection of the Panama Canal, sprawls for thirty-seven kilometers around peninsulas of land, between fragments of drowned mountains, and over the Continental Divide.
Description: "One hundred and fifty years ago, Charles Darwin asked how a rain forest could contain so many species: "What explains the riot?" The same question occupies the scientists who toil on Panama's Barro Colorado Island today. Tropical and steamy, the six-square-mile island, a locus of scientific activity since 1923, contains the best-studied rain forest in the world.".

"In The Tapir's Morning Bath, Elizabeth Royte weaves together her own adventures on Barro Colorado with tales of researchers struggling to parse the intricate workings of the rain forest, the most complicated natural system on the planet.

Through the lens of the field station, she traces the history of modern biology from its earliest days of collection and classification through the decline of the naturalist tradition to the days of intense niche specialization and rigorous scientific quantification."--BOOK JACKET.