The termites eat wood, for this reason they are considered a disaster for a forest – in particular those just replanted, which have yet to begin to grow and which could be damaged by the action of these insects.
At least so we thought so far: a new study published on Journal of Applied Ecology suggests exactly the opposite, namely that The new forests could benefit from a “transplant” of Termitiwhich favor its growth and health.
The old man and the new. The study, which focused not only on the termites but also on mushrooms, tries to understand how the rain forests work once they are replanted (perhaps because they are torn from intensive agriculture): just plant so many trees because the ecosystem is regenerated, or, so to speak, are the pieces lack?
To find out, the team has followed the situation of three Australian rain forests for four years, a old one (i.e. very old and never cut by man) and two recently created (one was planted in 2010 and the other in 2014). Here, scientists placed a series of wooden blocks, made available to mushrooms and termites; over the age of four, The team monitored the decay of the blocks, and calculated how quickly they put us to decompose.
Termite transplant? Their hypothesis, also based on previous studies, was that the mushrooms would “work” worse in the replanted forests, while the termites should not have had negative effects. In reality the opposite happened: The mushrooms acted effective everywhere, while the termites, which were also present in all three sites, have shown that they struggle to decompose the wood in the new forests, and to work at the maximum of effectiveness only in the old one.
The fact that the termites put more to decompose the wood in the new forests means that carbon and nutrients trapped in the wood take the same time to return to the ground and therefore in circulation in the ecosystem: this slowness could create health problems for the forest, and slow down its growth. The solution could be that of “transplant” vet wood in the freshly planted forests, counting that it brings with it decomposers of all kinds.
