Canopy beetles and flowering trees rely on each other in the Amazon, study

• News & Highlights

• A canopy scientist collected 859 species of beetles from the canopy species of a healthy lowland tropical rainforest in southern Venezuela.
• More than 75% of the beetle species collected were found living exclusively on flowering trees — many on trees with small white flowers.
• The results suggest that flowering trees play an important role in maintaining canopy beetle diversity in the Amazon and that these trees are being visited by beetles more than any other insect order, including bees and butterflies.
• To fight the global decline of insects, “researchers and conservationists must understand the ecological connections between insects and their food plants.”

Held aloft by a canopy crane nearly 10 stories above the forest floor, Susan Kirmse observed and collected beetles in the rainforest canopy for an entire year. What did she find? Amazonian treetops are crawling with beetles, and they love little white flowers.

As part of her Ph.D. research for Leipzig University, Germany, Kirmse collected 859 species of beetles (6,698 individuals) from the canopies of 23 different tree species in a healthy lowland tropical rainforest in southern Venezuela in the late 1990s.