Termites can decompose more than half of deadwood in tropical rainforest

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Author(s)
Griffiths, Hannah M
Ashton, Louise A
Evans, Theodore A
Parr, Catherine L
Eggleton, Paul
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2019
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Globally, an estimated 73 ± 6 Pg of carbon is contained in deadwood, representing roughly 30 times the amount of carbon sequestered by forests annually [1]. Decomposition transfers this carbon to the soil, other organisms or the atmosphere [2], but it is not clear how different biological agents contribute to the decomposition process. Using a novel large-scale termite suppression experiment in old growth tropical forest, we quantify, for the first time, the relative contribution of microbes and termites to deadwood decomposition. Contrary to prevailing understanding, we demonstrate that termites can be responsible for the ...
View more >Globally, an estimated 73 ± 6 Pg of carbon is contained in deadwood, representing roughly 30 times the amount of carbon sequestered by forests annually [1]. Decomposition transfers this carbon to the soil, other organisms or the atmosphere [2], but it is not clear how different biological agents contribute to the decomposition process. Using a novel large-scale termite suppression experiment in old growth tropical forest, we quantify, for the first time, the relative contribution of microbes and termites to deadwood decomposition. Contrary to prevailing understanding, we demonstrate that termites can be responsible for the majority of wood mass loss. Using a dead wood decomposition assay, we found termites were responsible for 58–64% of total mass loss, while microbes carried out 36–42%. Tropical forests are globally important for biodiversity and ecosystem service provision, yet climate change and habitat conversion [3] threaten the functioning of these forests with repercussions for the global biosphere [4]. Our study demonstrates that termite-mediated deadwood decay must be included in global carbon models. These findings will consequently help improve the accuracy of Earth-system models and climate forecasts in the face of global change.
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View more >Globally, an estimated 73 ± 6 Pg of carbon is contained in deadwood, representing roughly 30 times the amount of carbon sequestered by forests annually [1]. Decomposition transfers this carbon to the soil, other organisms or the atmosphere [2], but it is not clear how different biological agents contribute to the decomposition process. Using a novel large-scale termite suppression experiment in old growth tropical forest, we quantify, for the first time, the relative contribution of microbes and termites to deadwood decomposition. Contrary to prevailing understanding, we demonstrate that termites can be responsible for the majority of wood mass loss. Using a dead wood decomposition assay, we found termites were responsible for 58–64% of total mass loss, while microbes carried out 36–42%. Tropical forests are globally important for biodiversity and ecosystem service provision, yet climate change and habitat conversion [3] threaten the functioning of these forests with repercussions for the global biosphere [4]. Our study demonstrates that termite-mediated deadwood decay must be included in global carbon models. These findings will consequently help improve the accuracy of Earth-system models and climate forecasts in the face of global change.
View less >
Journal Title
Current Biology
Volume
29
Issue
4
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2019. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Subject
Biological sciences
Biomedical and clinical sciences
Psychology
Science & Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Cell Biology
WOOD DECOMPOSITION