We expect that epiphytic bryophytes may show some of the earliest and strongest responses to the cloud reduction experiment, but picking up these responses in the face of the massive bryophyte species diversity and physical diversity of canopy and branch positions has proved challenging. So Aline Horwath has come up with a nice solution: selecting individual species from key bryophyte groups (mosses and liverworts) as well as vascular epiphytes (orchid, fern, bromeliad) and attaching them to a uniform substrate which we have now suspended at uniform canopy positions. This should allow us to maintain a fair degree of ecological realism but exclude unwanted sources of variability to focus on the variation that matters – shifts in growth and survival following cloud reduction among different species and functional groups.