Description:
Lowland cloud forests are well known from temperate regions, e.g. the coasts of California and northern Chile (Bruijnzeel 2001), but in the Tropics have remained uninvestigated. We tested the hypothesis that tropical lowland cloud forest (LCF) and lowland rain forest (LRF) exist as distinct forest types with a higher abundance of epiphytes in LCF and differing in epiphyte species composition and microclimate. Furthermore, these forest types seem to occur in close proximity to one another, with LCF in valleys and LRF on adjacent slopes. To validate this hypothesis, we compared epiphyte diver...