Seasonal changes have a significant impact in every natural environment, but perhaps nowhere is that effect as dramatic as in Amazonia. Annually, Amazonia is hit by a deluge that overwhelms meadows where animals have resided for nearly half the year. By the end of the rains, the waterlands have become a vast, slow moving lake dotted with trees and broken by the half-submerged spits of flooded archipelagos. These flooded forests harbor the greatest diversity of aquatic life.