Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 2.51
View of the Pantanal, Nhecolândia, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. From Por 1995.
Used with permission from Springer Science and Business Media, Dordrecht.
forests with chaco/cerrado elements. To the west the Pantanal merges with
the Gran Chaco, and gallery forests along the rivers connect it northward,
through the cerrado, with the Amazon and Atlantic rain forests. This mo-
saic of interconnected communities illustrates, once again, the potential
for recombining various preadapted elements in response to changes in
climate.
An unusual feature of the Pantanal is the murundu islands. These are
mounds 1-2 m high in parts of the drier but seasonally inundated cerrado
phase of the Pantanal. They are built by termites (
Rotunditermes braganti-
nus
) or leaf-cutter ants (species of
Atta
and
Acromyrmex
), and the charac-
teristic spacing is due to the territoriality of the insects. The islands' value
to the ecosystem is that they provide wood for the termites, protect root
systems from water logging, and afford dry sites for trees during extended
multiyear fl ooding.
There are also balseiras, or camalotes, called embalsados in Argentina
