“…Epiphytes are most diverse in tropical regions, especially in the Neotropics ( Zotz, 2005 ; Suissa, Sundue & Testo, 2021 ) and there are extreme cases of high abundance where they can cover most of the surface area of the host tree. Hundreds of papers have been published since the late 1800s describing the ecology, biogeography, taxonomy, and population genetic structure of epiphytes ( Zotz & Hietz, 2001 ; Zotz, 2013a ; Menini Neto et al, 2016 ; Zotz, Hietz & Einzmann, 2021c ; Chaves et al, 2021 ; Taylor et al, 2022 ; Marcusso et al, 2022 ). Many studies have related within and between canopy epiphyte assemblages to environmental and structural properties of the host tree ( Morales-Linares et al, 2020 ; Victoriano-Romero et al, 2020 ) and also focused more recently on epiphyte-host tree commensalistic networks ( Burns, 2007 ; Burns & Zotz, 2010 ; Silva et al, 2010 ; Piazzon, Larrinaga & Santamaría, 2011 ; Ceballos, Chacoff & Malizia, 2016 ; Francisco et al, 2018 ; Francisco et al, 2019 ; Naranjo et al, 2019 ; Zotarelli et al, 2019 ; Cortés-Anzúres et al, 2020 ).…”