Photo of the Day 69

Insect Eaten Leaf, Puerto Rico, 2004

Photograph by Peter Essick

Light permeates an insect-eaten leaf in Caribbean National Forest, Puerto Rico. The only tropical rain forest in the United States' national forest system, Caribbean National Forest is a 28,000-acre (11,330-hectare) preserve to the east of the capital, San Juan. It receives, on average, a whopping 15 feet (4.5 meters) of rain each year.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "The Case of the Missing Carbon," February 2004, National Geographic magazine)