From the University of Central Florida
Climate change models could have a thing or two to learn from termites and fungi, according to a new study released this week.
For a long time scientists have believed that temperature is the dominant factor in determining the rate of wood decomposition worldwide. Decomposition matters because the speed at which woody material are broken down strongly influences the retention of carbon in forest ecosystems and can help to offset the loss of carbon to the atmosphere from other sources. That makes the decomposition rate a key factor in detecting potential changes to the climate.
But scientists from Yale, the University of Central Florida and SUNY Buffalo State found that fungi and termites, which help break down wood, may play a more significant role in the rate of decomposition than temperature alone.
The group’s findings appear in this week’s edition of the journal Nature Climate Change.
“The big surprise of this work was the realization that the impact of organisms surpassed climate as a control of decomposition across spatial scales,” said Joshua King, a biologist at UCF and co-author of the paper. “Understanding the ecology and biology of fungi and termites is a key to understanding how the rate of decomposition will vary from place to place.”
So how did scientists originally come up with temperature as the main factor in decomposition? It has to do with data and math. Scientists most often construct a model based on the average decomposition rates of sites that are in close proximity to each other. In this case, it appears that each local number matter because they reflect the activity of fungi and termites. The team suggests that scientists need to embrace the variability found across data collected from many different sites instead of averaging it all together to create better models with more accurate predictions.
The team reached this conclusion after running a 13-month experiment. They distributed 160 blocks of pine tree wood across five sub-regions of temperate forest in the eastern U.S. — from Connecticut to northern Florida — and then monitored the decay that occurred.
They selected similar forest types, hardwood deciduous forests, to focus on major differences in climate across the regional gradient. (The average annual temperature in southern New England is about 11 degrees Celsius cooler than Florida.) Within each of the five sub-regions they placed the wood blocks in different types of terrain to evaluate the effects of local versus regional factors as controls on decomposition.
“Most people would try to make sure everything was as standard as possible,” said Mark A. Bradford, an assistant professor of terrestrial ecosystem ecology at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES) and lead author of the study. “We said, ‘Well, let’s generate as much variation as possible.’ So we put some blocks on south-facing slopes, where they would be warmer in the summer, and others on north-facing slopes where it’s colder. We put some on top of ridges and others next to streams where it was wetter.”
After 13 months, they measured how much wood had been lost, whether to the consumption of fungi growing on the wood or to termites consuming the wood.
According to their analysis, local-scale factors explained about three quarters of the variation in wood decomposition, while climate explained only about one quarter, contrary to the expectation that climate should be the predominant control.
“We’re reaching the wrong conclusion about the major controls on decomposition because of the way we’ve traditionally collected and looked at our data,” Bradford said. “That in turn will weaken the effectiveness of climate prediction.”
The team’s recommendation: collect more data at local sites and improve our understanding of how local conditions affect the organisms that drive decomposition, because they could significantly improve the effectiveness of climate change projections.
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Co-authors of the study include: Robert J. Warren II from SUNY Buffalo State; Petr Baldrian from the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic; Thomas W. Crowther, Daniel S. Maynard and Emily E. Oldfield from Yale; William R. Wieder, from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO and Stephen A. Wood from Columbia University.
The National Science Foundation and Yale Climate & Energy Institute funded the research.
Good grief, I’m shocked mainstream biology missed things as obvious as wetter / drier.
I guess punching numbers into a computer is easier than fieldwork…
The lat two paragraphs say it all, really.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for the devout warmists to change their methods, though.
This reminds me of Salby’s chart showing parts of Africa as major CO2 sources…
What ? real science !
No “it must be co2 so give me more money” conclusion ?
The AGW crowd have got a firm handle on ALL of the variables. These termite/fungi people obviously have not gotten the news that the science is settled. They are wasting their time.
Whilst these campus climate clowns are spending down their generous endowments on inaccurate supercomputer programmes, sipping lattes in the the chic cafe’s, between jetting to seminars in 5 star locations, – nature keeps on building its overwhelming diversity and deepening mysteries – who woulda thunk??
Hmm… They dropped blocks of pine in the midst of deciduous forests to test decomposition. Seems to me that might lead to surprises.
I would also be interested in have wood of a native species wood fare, dropping pine blocks into an eco-system that has self-optimized to decay maple or birch could be miss-leading.
Termite activity (cold blooded animal) and fungi are both possibly influenced by temp. So in the end, temp could be the dominant factor.
Where did all that coal come from? Evil stuff, now causing carbon pollution, asthma attacks, and heart attacks (John Podesta, Counselor to the President).
One word: DUH !
Sure, go ahead and ignore the CO2 satellite numbers that show major sources of CO2 in the tropical rain forests. There is nothing really new here, simply the major DUH moment enforcing everything ecologists have discovered about rates of decomposition. CO2 has always been controlled by life on earth, mediated by temp & moisture, as evidenced by the teeny-tiny-eeniie-weenie CO2 number versus oxygen. We have just been waiting for all the AGW morons to have their AHA !! moment. Chalk another one reinforcing Salby & others (aside from plain common sense).
Slow doods, very slow.
@ur momisugly Dr, Torch — not exactly…
Termites CONTROL the ambient temperature inside their nests, which is why they build them so high above ground in areas with high surface temperature variability.
Temperature is a very important variable in wood decay. If it gets below 50 degrees Fahrenheit or above 90 degrees. The organisms are essentially dormant. Shackleton’s huts eventually rotted in Antarctica; basically wood rots anywhere it grows. But wood rots fastest in the tropics. Nobody tests wood preservatives exclusively in northern latitudes. New wood preservatives are always tested in tropical latitudes. Termites don’t survive winters in northern climates unless they over-winter in artificially heated soil or wood. Wooden utility poles in the tropics never give the same sort of performance they do in higher latitudes. So much so, they are usually not the first choice for pole material. But… like climate there are lots of variables. Moisture, temperature, oxygen, soil pH. But the most variable of all is the wood destroying organisms themselves. Fungi which destroy wood are incredibly variable, poorly understood, wildly unpredictable in distribution.
You could run the same experiment and move each location fifty miles and get very different results, but you might reach the same conclusion. A whole lot more going on than just temperature variation. Wood guys already know that.
Post normal -Nil, Nature – 1.
Those who came up with temperature being the dominant factor probably never talked to an Egyptologist, archeologist, or museum curator.
Slightly off topic , but if you treat wood with Coper Brite ” termite proof ” then termites ,wood destroying beetles ,carpenter ants ,wood rot,and mold are all killed .
Very effective !
Dr. Torch,
There are about 3000 termite species. Almost all of them only found in the tropical latitudes. There are about 45 species in the United States. Almost all of them are in the south latitudes. I assure you, termites play a very insignificant role in the northern half of the United States. Fungal organisms are essentially the only meaningful vector for bio-degradation of wood in most of the world. Structural wood in buildings is the only place you have termite activity in areas where the frost sets in soil annually. There are exceptions, but they are not of significance.
Sweet Old Bob, Using Copper Brite as an insecticide, herbicide, fungicide, or rodenticide is a violation of federal law. A felony, I believe. Without an EPA pesticide label, its a no no. Selling Copper Brite for that intended purpose is where they would really get you; advertising pesticide claims without a label.
oh good grief…….use pressure treated
William Abbott umm.. the termite prufe can says “effective against : termites beetles (wood destroying)carpenter ants wood rot and mold “. I think I will take their word for it.
This is a good illustation of the problem that occurs when one is only selling hammers: Every problem looks like a nail.
The climate obsessed are selling CO2, so every question looks like global warming.
Co-author Joshua King’s work in studying invasive species of social insects: “In my lab we study community assembly and species invasions at multiple scales in the context of natural and human-altered landscapes. One of the overarching themes of the research program is to understand the fundamental mechanisms that drive species invasions associated with land-use changes.”
His papers on that site deal mostly in exotic ants in Florida and fire ants, but termites are a social insect and very very invasive, so that goes only a little way in explaining his presence in this study distributing pine blocks in the five regions of US forests….
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What is the most evil termite? My nomination is Formosan, which eats live trees. “Formosan termites cause the same type of damage as the other subterranean termites. They cause more rapid damage than native subterranean termites. They have been known to attack more than 47 plant species, including citrus, wild sherry, cherry laurel, sweet gum, cedar, willow, wax myrtle, Chinese elm and white oak. Formosan termites feed on both the spring growth and the summer growth wood. They have also been known to eat through non-cellulose material, such as thin sheets of soft metal (lead or copper), asphalt, plaster, creosote, rubber, and plastic,searching for food and moisture.”
William Abbott,
Not sure where you get your information from. Termites are found in every state in the US except Alaska. They tend to stick to forested areas primarily and they eat quite a bit of wood. The only reason they are more obvious in Florida is there are more flying versions of termites down there and are harder to control. They aren’t a huge issue anywhere because Orkin has a good handle on them and we (people) tend to defend our homes vigorously. Folks who don’t pay attention to termites will once they lose a wall or floor to them. If you want a better feel for termites go walk in the woods, even northern woods have quite a lot of them. If you struggle to identify whether you looking at a ant or termite, ants have a tapered abdomen and bent antenna, whereas termites have straight antenna and abdomen.
As for using pesticides its perfectly legal to both purchase and use iaw with the manufacturers label.
Finally rot in wood is not what they were measuring, rather decomposition. Wood rots for a lot of reasons, houses are not a good reference for activity since man does what he can to stop it. The scientists in this piece actually planted wood and came back and looked at it. So I think Ill believe their collected data rather than your silly postulation with no supporting data.
v/r,
David Riser
William Abbott says: June 6, 2014 at 1:44 pm termites play a very insignificant role in the northern half of the United States
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Perhaps it would be better to say that termite diversity and overall colony abundance decrease as conditions become colder. Termites in coastal areas of all northern states can be locally very abundant and destroy homes, decompose wood, etc. Species can be found in very cold places like Massachusetts, Montana, Washington, etc. but admittedly not in the kind of overall abundance seen in the more southern states.
With insects, absolute conclusions are not going to hold up since there are ALWAYS exceptions given the large diversity of the groups involved.
“The big surprise of this work was the realization that the impact of organisms surpassed climate as a control of decomposition across spatial scales,” said Joshua King, a biologist at UCF and co-author of the paper. “Understanding the ecology and biology of fungi and termites is a key to understanding how the rate of decomposition will vary from place to place.”
No s**t Sherlock