With high temperatures and a blistering sun, the introduction of the first life to Venus’s equator will be difficult. The spots used for the seeding of the most basic forms of life – microorganisms – will need to be places like the narrow north-south clefts between rocks where nutrients and water exist and there is plenty of shade. Places like this on Earth can be shallow as in a limestone Karst landscape or very deep as in some desert oases. Key nutrients may need to be artificially supplied, but choosing a place where both water and nutrients exist naturally would help life to spread beyond the narrow confines of the cleft.
This gradual addition of life, from the microorganisms up toward more advanced plants and animals would help to create a shaded ecosystem where only mature trees would receive the sun’s full intensity and everything else benefits from the shade. The trees would also support the rest of the ecosystem by the production of edible flowers, fruit, leaves and bark.
To help the trees spread beyond the original narrow cleft would require seed dispersal by species which can move outside their ecosystem. Nocturnal fruit bats could do this, but would need more protection from the sun’s heat than just a daytime roost in the branches of semi-mature trees. This may mean artificial shelters need constructing or lava tubes locating so that they can survive daytime temperatures.
Additionally nocturnal fruit bats on earth only fly on moonlit nights, which with no Venusian moon would mean they would need another way to find their way about in the dark. This might mean everything in these forests would need to be luminous, or that fruit bats would need to borrow echo location from their insectivorous cousins.
charlesjoynson 