Abstract

Early European ideas on tropical vegetation were based on temperate preconceptions and on initial contact with secondary and pantropical vegetation types. Modern angiosperm forests in the context of fossil tropical forest are a recent phenomenon. They are maintained as a mosaic of regenerating gaps affected by environmental factors but also historical factors such as continental drift, vulcanism, and animal extinction and by slow rates of colonization by trees as well as the long lifespans of the latter, which may thus outlive their ecological associations and exist as "living fossils." Man's early effect was to modify the forest framework in terms of gaps and by consciously and unconsciously selecting certain trees. Modern destruction has increased this modification and also the number of anachronisms. In response, many trees have been found to be far more flexible than was previously supposed and to survive under the new regime, though the "new" forests differ markedly from those less affected by man.