The humble termite could have a role to play in the regeneration of the tropical jungle.
The termites, destructive famous, particularly in the tropics, are not popular in regenerated forests.
But the environmentalist, Dr. Baptiste Wijas, of the United States Cary Institute and the University of Queensland, and a team of collaborators, have been using termites and fungi, both decomponers, to help predict the health of the forest and the rates of carbon kidnapping in replanting sections of the northern end of Queensland’s Daintree Rainforest.
“People tend to think that when planting a diversity of trees, these tropical jungles will regenerate,” says Wijas, “but it is worth thinking, if we are really also putting in other organisms, to restore other ecosystems processes that help forest function?
Decomponeers such as bacteria, fungi, termites and other insects are essential to recycle nutrients and carbon. Without such organisms, any tropical jungle would be full of dead wood and, in the case of Daintree, Cassawary and Possum Poo.
Wijas and the team established wooden blocks in 3 areas in the Daintree National Park to determine how well the decomponents were. They compared an old growth site, with two that had been replanted, one 4 years earlier, the other 8 years before. The regeneration sites of the rainforest had been clear for pineapple, bananas and oil palm around 1900, but abandoned in the early 2000s and replanted with forest trees in 2010 and 2014.
The blocks were verified in search of fungi and termites at intervals of 6 months for four years, and the decomposition was measured.
The regeneration field work of the tropical jungle can be a challenge. “You are sweating all the time, and there are plants that want to attack you everywhere,” Wijas said. In a year, the team experienced drought, floods, fires, 45 temperaturesEITHERC, and “a zombie cyclone (Ciclón Nora) that caught us twice,” said Zanne. “It was an epic and biblical year.”
The fungi grew almost the same in the old growth and the replanting forests, but the termites were not so active in the new growth, with the wooden blocks in slower decay. Wijas says that this could have been reduced to number, diversity or maturity of the colonies of termites.
As the most slow nutrient and carbon cycle could damage the health of the region and future growth, he and the equipment found an innovative solution: dead wood transplant and its burden of fungi and termites and other decomponeers. The new forests are little in dead wood, so this could stimulate the communities of the decomposition.
“A young and regenerating forest does not have a lot of dead wood,” says co -author Dr. Amy Zanne … “Then, if you bring these trunks, you are giving them some food to mark them while waiting for parts of the trees to begin to fall.”
Termitas mounds were also on the potential list of transplantation, “which is something that nobody has really thought,” says Wijas.
Others are not so safe.
“I’m not sure to buy that,” says the evolutionary biologist professor Nathan about the University of Sydney. “You should put in hell so that they coincide with the amount you have on the tropical borders of old growth. I do not think it is feasible to put enough in dead wood to start the termites. I think you just have to wait until those rainfall grow. They require years to mature, and eventually you will have that dead wood occurs, then the terms of terms will increase. I will not be sure that you will not be sure. They use the methods.
He did not participate in the investigation.
The authors recognize that there are challenges in this approach to the regeneration of the tropical jungle, among which it would be to convince managers to transplant the termites to their region. “Many people, forest managers included, don’t like termites,” Wijas said. “But they play an important role in having a healthy forest.”
“I think that a young tropical jungle could also have different termites for an old tropical jungle,” he says. “It is not well known. Nobody has really done that. Therefore, it is good that they have done this study, because it opens interesting questions about how tropical forests are developed and what insects are necessary to help them develop.”
“We believe that the termites could be enclosing carbon in their nests,” says Wijas. “When they eat wood, they can’t digest everything, so the feces they use to build their nests could be quite rich in carbon. They can even block more carbon than they emit, but we still don’t know.”
“Termites and fungi are absolutely critical for forest function,” Zanne said. “It would be interesting to see who more returns to the regenerative forests if the termites are there, perhaps ants, lizards and planners who eat termites. At this time, we simply have no idea if these organisms are returning to these systems.”
The Tropical Jungle Regeneration Document was published in the Applied Ecology Magazine.
Tropical jungle regeneration
#Termites #regeneration #Tropical #Daintree #jungle
