# setteing up biotype/ biotope



## james67 (Jun 28, 2008)

i am looking for real data on very specific habitats. hopefully someone on these forums has actually traveled to these localles and collected or identified specific plant species in them. 1) man creek, panama. 2) oyapok river,french guyana. i have spent COUNTLESS hours researching but (to me) it is all worthless with out some conformation , perhaps pix, and lists of plant species. in particular small terrarium size ones  as very large plants will do me no good. ANY help is greatly appreciated.


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## james67 (Jun 28, 2008)

no comments? someone has to have some info :? ...... it is proving to be very difficult to get accurate data on this. if you have ANY info it may help.


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## Dendrobait (May 29, 2005)

Sorry...I've tried this before...it is not that easy at all.

If you do Costa Rica, their is a good site for that. I believe I may have seen a plant list for Guyana. 

After visiting Tortugero(and seeing Syngonium rayii, Microgramma, and Spathyphyllum in the wild...very cool!) I can say one thing.

Stick to typical looking plants, and chances are what you pick will more or less represent some of the stuff that occurs in those very diverse forests.


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## piznipy (Aug 19, 2008)

yes I wish i could create a completely natural enviroment too. idk in desperation people find a way. I would ask a worker at the zoo that designs the dart frog exibits about it.


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## james67 (Jun 28, 2008)

well thanks for the help all. i have done as much research as i care to (many many nights) and have essentially given up. i even wrote a number of colleges in south america, some answered , but most didnt. the ones who did offered not one suggestion of a single plant species. i guess it is something i will have to acomplish later on down the line with alot of paper work and a collecting expedition of sorts. and i have seen the guyana shield list of plant species. its incredibly long, but i did get some helpful stuff there. thanks


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## valledelcauca (Apr 13, 2004)

Hey James,

I`ve been to French Guyana some years ago.
Not to Oyapok, but to Mont Matoury and Montagne de Kaw. The main difference to other habitats I`ve seen so far, the rainforest of the Guyana Shield is very "simple", which means you basicly have large-leaved Philodendron species, tree trunks, lots of leave litter and, if you are lucky enough to find one, a bromeliad (vriesea splendens) growing close to the ground. 
Check the link below, this basicly is the closest design to the rainforest over there
http://www.t-eisenberg.de/dendrobatidenzucht.htm
Click on the pictures to enlarge them

I did not mention Orchids, because you very likely won`t find any close to the ground, except they fell from a tree.

Here`s a great link, it`s in french, but lists all species of plants of the Nouragues area (which is habitat to french guyana cobalts). Probably all plants you find around Oyapok are on that list.
http://www.nouragues.cnrs.fr/plant.html

Greetings
Andreas

PS: Check my gallery for some pictures


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## JoshH (Feb 13, 2008)

I wouldn't give up that easy, start by forming basic list of acceptable plants that you know grow in those countries or surrounding ones. Then you should be able to search for the orgin of each species on a search engine and start narrowing it down. You will probably have to settle on getting stuff that is biotopically correct for a country, it would be very hard to take it beyond that. 

Most zoos and aquariums don't even bother to use the correct plants at all, and if they do its basic country wide species. I've been doing this for years in my displays and find it very rewarding. And S. American stuff is easy to find, all your bromos, pleurothallid orchids, syngoniums, philos, anthuriums, calatheas, etc all come from S.A. At least for the orchids you can use Andys Orchids as a search engine to search by country.

Good luck!


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## skylsdale (Sep 16, 2007)

Just a quick FYI:

*biotope:* an area of uniform environmental conditions providing a living place for a specific assemblage of plants and animals.

*biotype:* a group of organisms having the same or nearly the same genotype.

Something to think about in trying to replicate a biotope: keep in mind the actual interaction of the animals with their environments, what types of plants grow _where_, etc. For instance, you can get umpteen species of actual plants found specifically within the range of the target species you want to keep in a viv...and then plant the viv in a way (and therefore create an environment) that is very unnatural in how the plants grow, interact with each other, etc. (think Dutch planting styles of planted aquariums). If you look at images from Central and South American rainforests, there are certain things you see quite frequently, some of them being shingling species of plants (such as Monstera spp.) and various types of Philodendron. If you're serious about recreating a somewhat reasonable biotope, you'll need to consider the size of space in your vivarium and think about, in the wild, how many different types and species of plants would actually be growing in such a relatively small space.

Also, really research the type of frog you are getting and its specific requirements and possible habitat niches. For instance, I recently talked with someone who has spent quite a bit of time down in Panama and Costa Rica observing O. pumilio and D. auratus. In regards to auratus, the were nearly always associated with woody debris or rocks and small boulder piles, which they used for cover. So, rather than a lushly planted Edenistic garden of a viv, if you're really wanting to by biotopically correct for these guys, you'd probably want to go heavy on the hardscape with wood and stone, and perhaps just a creeping Philo and another plant species or two.

Just my $o.o2...


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## james67 (Jun 28, 2008)

The first tank (oyapock tank) has a species of spathiphyllum (these do grow in the Guyana shield, I do not know however if the exact variety does) it also contains "variegated philodendron" Epipremnum aureum (which is not native and is only temporary until I get the monstera), some form of Guzmania brom (likely Guzmania lingulata, which has also been collected in the Guyana shield), some light green caladium species (that, like the spathiphyllum, is native to the area but I don’t know about the exact variety's origin) and some bromileliads that I have yet to identify. There is a small, very shallow "stream" that flows through the tank, and the substrate is a mixture of leaf litter, sticks, etc, and live moss. It is rather naturalistic (in my opinion) as vivs go. 











The pum tank has a less accurate setting... there is a Vriesea splendens (accidently mislabeled by myself earlier in a different post as Vriesea Splenreit) I picked this one up for the axil size. There are also non-native palms, chamaedorea elegans, from Guatemala. I chose these because they are small and slow growing. I had seen a lot of palms in the man creek habitats I researched. There are also caladiums in this tank and they are found in this region. it also contains the same unidentified broms, and same leaf litter moss mix, and again the pothos (that will be changed)

this shot looking up is very unflattering as the tank seems to be all one height, and... you can see the tv in the reflection










Both need to grow out, btw look for my blue and bronze tank, which I already found the rocks for earlier today, and I also just started construction on a 5.5 x-tra tall . Thanks for the help everyone


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## Dendrobait (May 29, 2005)

Agreed with Skysdale 100%

For example, many hobbyists like to create a tank with logs with Neoregalia bromelaids on them, a few inches off the ground, or coming out of a slope. Now, ignoring the fact that that particular sp. is from Brazil from what I saw in Costa Rica you hardly ever see bromelaids any less than 10 feet off the ground unless they have fallen there. So generally these tanks do not represent the rainforest floor very well.

You may want to go through the trouble of acquiring 1-2 species of plants native to your biotope if they are very distinctive(Syngonium rayii for Costa Rica, although the plant is quite rare in the wild). The rest you can get close enough with plants from around the world. 

Also, their is a problem with the small sizes of our terrariums. You can either choose to miniaturize(broms in branches signifying a dead tree), or take a snapshot out of a habitat(base of a tree or eroded slope). Problem with the latter approach is that you may not be able to put everything your frogs need into such a small space.


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