Are tropical streams really different?

摘要

In the preface of a recent collection of review articles on tropical stream ecology, Dudgeon (2008) stated that there is no such thing as a "typical" tropical stream.The tropics make up the area of the globe between lat 23°N and 23°S, and include a great variety of climatic,geologic, and geomorphologic conditions (Boulton et al. 2008). Thus, tropical streams can flow through landscapes as varied as evergreen rain forests, deciduous seasonal forests, high-altitude grasslands, or even deserts. This diversity suggests that generalizations about tropical streams might be difficult to come by,but it also indicates that much is to be learned about stream ecology in tropical regions.