Interesting statistics on Ecuador

• Ecuador covers 0.005 percent of the Earths surface.
• 10 percent of all plant species on earth exist here (more than all of North America).
• 1600 bird species are known to live in or frequent Ecuador, most of them in the Oriente region (east of the Andes into the could forest & down into the Amazon basin).  
• A recent study of the Ecuadorian Amazon basin found 3,000 different types of beetles in a 12-meter square area.
• 12 square meters is about 130 square feet or about 1/2 the size of my bedroom in my apartment in Brooklyn.  If I find one kind of beetle in that whole place, I freak out a little.  

One theory is that the Amazon region had been incredibly unique as far back as the Pleistocene era and with that much time for unique animals to live together, all of them evolved to find their own micro-niches within the ecosystem.

If I ever came home to find 3,000 beetles living together in a space the size of my bedroom, I think I would have to move.  Quickly.