Forest is a world of itself. The trees that live inside one aren't aware the place they grow is called a forest by humans, they just grow where their seeds landed, sometimes centuries ago. Their branches just bend towards the sun, roots away towards water and phosphorus and fungal symbionts and other trees' roots, exchanging information, at times being dodged or entangled with animal life beneath the soil. Grubs gnaw at root hairs, eventually making their way up towards the xylem inside of said roots' tree's trunk to chew themselves homes there.24Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMSbaseD9dx
Yes, trees in a forest host many forms of animal life, both aboveground and below. Just an oak tree's leaf canopy could hold leaf rolling caterpillars, galls formed by mites, galls with fly larva inside, galls with wasp larvae inside, tent caterpillars, sawflies, spiders that weaved the leaf into a hidden web, earwigs inside similarly folded leaves... and those were just leaves, the photosynthesizing organ that keeps the tree alive. Moths and drain flies camouflage with the tree's wrinkled outer bark while grubs chew their way through cambium, the part of the tree that actively grows. Trees lack immune systems, so bark beetles can go through their entire life cycles inside a tree without once being attacked by the tree itself.24Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvfqZK4LbkM
Conifers, on the other hand, can fight back in one specific form - sap can trap the organisms that would otherwise lay their eggs within the confines of the bark. But needles too face specialized threats just as oak leaves do - aphids and scale insects and pineapple cone galls. Not to mention organisms after the organisms underneath the bark - parasitoid wasps can suss out the chemical pheromones emitted by their hosts. A larva inside a larva, a Russian nesting doll of insect existence that may only be noticed after pupation, or may go unnoticed altogether. Human beings tend to not notice insects that live their lives inside trees unless said trees are useful for human endeavors, at which point the goal becomes elimination, not coexistence. Rare humans may desire coexistence, but not to the extent trees in a forest require it. Had there been a point to this detour? Right, all organisms create signals that send messages to their enemies. The forest is a violent place to be a bug.24Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ17LmNKK7Sr
No, trees have a unique perspective, both aboveground and below, their roots brushing up against earthworms that have only been here a mere three hundred years. Leaves migrate from the canopy to the forest floor in fall, leaf litter a layer meant to carpellt the forest. Earthworms enjoy eating that leaf litter layer, a battle endangering North American forests ever since earthworms' introduction.24Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡronBQfgJzP
"Do all merchants wear hats?" A human might ask, and in the forest, the answer may in fact be yes, if by merchant one means the creator and distributor of homes. Woodpeckers, with their bright red caps, are these merchants, carving holes in trees to live in and even more to eat from. Pecking out carpenter ants the way a merchant would haggle at a street fair, trying to angle for the best deal, the biggest beak full of chitin, woodpeckers earned their meals by carving them out of the wood that was their namesake. The holes that woodpeckers created could later house wood ducks, flycatchers, wrens, owls, squirrels… they truly were the merchants of the woods, selling safety to others once their haunts were abandoned, babies nursed on nutritious grubs until they became red capped wanderers of the treetops themselves (or, for some females, simply black and white, plumage only slightly changed from when they were chicks).24Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiidWcSjqYX
Ecosystem engineers, that is the more common metaphor used to describe woodpeckers, since ecology by definition is not capitalist, has few merchants as prices paid are rarely fair exchanges, and if they are, they're rarely as quantifiable as humanity would like them to be. Ecosystem services is phrase used in a human attempt to quantify and capitalize upon the value of a forest, and in doing so they fail to comprehend what their own value was built upon.
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