The tropical forest of Panama 's Barro Colorado Island is a luxuriant community of plants and animals, pulsating with life and offering an astonishing view of nature's myriad processes. What does the forest look like? How do the activities of this forest's plants and animals create a community? A new traveling Smithsonian exhibition answers these questions through the vivid photography of tropical ecologist and nature photographer Christian Ziegler.
"A Magic Web: The Tropical Forest of Barro Colorado Island " will be begin a national tour at the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Natural History at UNLV on July 6. The exhibition will be on view through Aug. 29. Following its display in Las Vegas , the exhibition will continue touring through 2008.
The 40 large-format color photographs featured in the exhibition provide views of the forest and its spectacular diversity of inhabitants and show many of the activities that give the forest its character and lend structure to its community. The photographs and bilingual text (English/Spanish) reveal the many ways the forest's plants and animals compete with, but also depend on each other.
"Rainforests are fantastic, wondrous places," said Ziegler. "Step into one and you are immersed in a complex web of life like no other on earth. My hope is that people understand not only the beauty, but also the necessity to preserve these unique habitats
that are under so much pressure and will be lost in just a few years if we don't act."
The exhibit includes six sections: an introduction to the tropical forest ecosystem, diversity, mutualisms, the roles of plants and animals in the food chain , predation, and the preservation of these environments. Ziegler captured the images during 15 months of fieldwork in Panama , and this exhibition gives visitors an illuminating glimpse of a tropical rainforest through the combined lenses of art and scientific exploration.
Available for viewing will be "A Magic Web/Un Tejido Magico Virtual Gallery," an interactive computer gallery featuring all the exhibition photographs with bilingual (English/Spanish) text, and "A Day on Barro Colorado Island," a 15-minute DVD video program, filmed and produced by exhibition curator Miles Roberts, deputy head of the department of conservation biology and curator of the Amazonia Science Gallery at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park.
"A Magic Web" was organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES), in cooperation with the Smithsonian National Zoological Park and Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI).
Other SITES e xhibition descriptions and tour schedules are available at <a href="http://www.sites.si.edu">www.sites.si.edu</a>.
The UNLV Marjorie Barrick Museum of Natural History is open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. , and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Admission is free. For more information, contact 895-3381.
