For most of her young life, Margaret “Meg” Lowman, a forest canopy specialist and self-described “arbor-naut,” looked up at the treetops from the ground. It wasn’t until she traveled to Panama for a research trip that, perched on a canopy access crane that belonged to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, she was able to get a bird’s-eye-view. The alternate perspective showed her something striking: The highest layer of the forest canopy wasn’t a uniform layer of green, but a patchwork of green islands separated by rivers of empty space. What…
