Fauna of the Rainforest Floor

Fauna refers to small animal life characteristic of a certain region, period or special environment.

Life on the forest floor is very small; countless bacteria and fungi live out their lives by breaking down the detritus that falls from the leaves above and then lie on the forest floor.  Dead wood is broken down by bracket fungi; orange cup fungi, and termites or woodlice, which contain symbiotic microorganisms that permit cellulose (the toughest part of wood) to be broken down.  Thus, these industrious colonial insects should be viewed as essential members of the recycyling team, it's not their fault that your house is made of dead wood!  Termites build their colonies in healthy trees and must construct covered trails in order to descent to the forest floor and perform their duty.

A multitude of insects, milipedes, centipedes and many undescribed by scientists, make their homes in the forest floor and live by consuming converted detrital material or the fungi and bacteria that break it down.  Rainforest toads, that are newly transormed from tadpoles to adults, hop among the littered forest floor, perfectly disgused by protective coloration to match the background.  Snakes slide along in search of toads or unwary rodents, while larger predators such a Grey Fox, and Coatimundi cruise along the ground, hoping to find other small unwary animals. 

Decomposers are vital links in the eternal cycle of death and rebirth in the rain forest.

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