wyrm

A batman hoverfly! They're called that because if you look, there's a shape on its thorax that looks like the bat symbol!

plate 39, opaque & polarizing objects, and plate 42, rocks, from the micrographic dictionary: a guide to the examination and investigation of the structure and nature of microscopic objects, 1883 (biodiversity heritage library)

In the canopy, amazing worlds emerge. Different species of trees thrive in soil up to 3 feet deep within the inner folds of some of the redwoods. One tree climber once found an 8-foot-tall Sitka spruce growing in the upper heights of a giant redwood.

Beranek described the tree and its environment as a world unto itself. He told me: “Other than a few lichen and mosses that are adapted specifically to life in the canopy, everything else — and I do mean everything — that you see growing in the redwood forest can be found growing in the canopy of our old-growth redwoods.” He’s even seen grass growing on high.

Epiphytes (plants that grow on other plants, a common strategy for botanic life around the world) build up bulk and size, drawing their moisture and nutrients from the air, rain and nearby debris. As those rafts of plant matter accumulate, they create a carpet-like layer that collects falling organic material: leaves, twigs, bird poop and other debris shaken loose by the wind or birds. This organic material starts to decay, with help from omnipresent microbes, and soil is born. Not only does the soil host other forms of life — including small creatures ranging from crickets and beetles to mollusks, amphibians and earthworms — it also regulates the climate within the canopy, providing insulation against temperature fluctuations, sound and wind.

It’s not just plant material up in the canopy. The zoologist Michael Camann has found aquatic crustaceans called copepods living in the fern mats — lush, large epiphytes that grow atop branches or inside of tree cavities. Other surprise animals have been found, including a new species of earthworm and wandering salamanders (Aneides vagrans), which spend almost all of their lives up in the canopy.

—Daniel Lewis, from "The Extraordinary Lives Of Coast Redwoods," in Noēma

(Image Source: "The Redwood Canopies: A World Above the Forest Floor" on Grandfather Tree)