The Plant You Don’t Have To Water

Some plants can drink water from the air - and that has some weird effects on the forests where they live.

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To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
Epiphyte: a plant that grows on another plant but does not feed from it

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CREDITS
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Kate Yoshida | Script Writer, Narrator and Director
Lizah van der Aart | Illustration, Video Editing and Animation
Aldo de Vos | Music

Thanks to Prof. Jon Van Stan for sharing his expertise in wet plants:   / prof_van_stan  

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Lizah van der Aart • Sarah Berman • Cameron Duke
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Ever Salazar • Leonardo Souza • Kate Yoshida

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REFERENCES
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Gotsch, S., Nadkarni, N., & Amici, A. (2016). The functional roles of epiphytes and arboreal soils in tropical montane cloud forests. Journal of Tropical Ecology, 32(5), 455-468. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026646741600...

Hargis H, Gotsch SG, Porada P, Moore GW, Ferguson B, Van Stan JT II. (2019) Arboreal Epiphytes in the Soil-Atmosphere Interface: How Often Are the Biggest “Buckets” in the Canopy Empty? Geosciences 9(8):342. https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences90...

Hembre K, Meyer A, Route T, Glauser A and Stanton DE (2021) Stand-Level Variation Drives Canopy Water Storage by Non-vascular Epiphytes Across a Temperate-Boreal Ecotone. Front. For. Glob. Change 4:704190. https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2021.704190

Nadkarni, N. M. (1984). Epiphyte Biomass and Nutrient Capital of a Neotropical Elfin Forest. Biotropica, 16(4), 249–256. https://doi.org/10.2307/2387932

Porada, P., Van Stan, J.T. & Kleidon, A. (2018). Significant contribution of non-vascular vegetation to global rainfall interception. Nature Geosci 11, 563–567. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-018-01...

Stanton, D.E., Huallpa Chávez, J., Villegas, L., Villasante, F., Armesto, J., Hedin, L.O. and Horn, H. (2014), Epiphytes improve host plant water use by microenvironment modification. Funct Ecol, 28: 1274-1283. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.12249

Stuntz, S., Simon, U. & Zotz, G. (2002) Rainforest air-conditioning: the moderating influence of epiphytes on the microclimate in tropical tree crowns. Int J Biometeorol 46, 53–59. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-001-01...