Mosses generate the humidity that sustains the entire rain forest food web

Evidence

There is a positive feedback loop created between mosses and humidity. The more mosses there are, the greater the humidity. More humidity leads inexorably to more mosses. The continual exhalation of mosses gives the temperate rain forest much of its essential character, from bird song to banana slugs. Without a saturated atmosphere, small creatures would dry out too quickly, due to their extravagantly high surface area :volume ratio. As the air dries, so do they. So without the mosses, there would be fewer insects and stepwise up the food chain, a deficit of thrushes. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 582

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the ‘moisture begets moss’ causal chain the whole chapter braids; connects to the disturbance-diversity and habitat threads of earlier chapters. — connects to: Moss can absorb fifty thousand liters of rain per hectare in a single storm. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 571; Moss carpets raise mycorrhizal density and enable phosphorous circulation between canopy and soil — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 593; Mosses move water passively by harnessing surface forces rather than expending energy — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 200
• ADDENDUM: Direct supporting causal detail for the trees-as-infrastructure piece’s treatment of moss as a forest moisture system component.

Broader Connections

• Mosses move water passively by harnessing surface forces rather than expending energy #expands (0.85) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 200