Most people think of termites as a nuisance that consumes wood in homes and businesses. In fact, these termites make up less than four percent of all termite species worldwide. Termites are vital in natural ecosystems – especially in the tropics – as they play a key role in the decomposition of wood. Without termites, the world would be full of dead plants and animals.
Forested ecosystems contain over 675 billion tons of biomass; A significant part of this biomass has been immobilized in wood for centuries. According to new research, and coupled with current trends in global change, where we expect a shift in warming to tropical climates in many areas around the world, the impact that termites could have on wood decomposition is likely to increase as termites likely to have access to ecosystems where they are not currently present
In an international study that collected data at 133 sites in 20 countries, assistant professor Paul-Camilo Zalamea and research associate Carolina Sarmiento from the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of South Florida, along with more than 100 collaborators, learned that termites are a key Play a role in the degradation of wood, which contributes to the Earth’s carbon cycle. Their research also showed that termites are very sensitive to temperature and precipitation — as temperatures warm, termites’ role in wood-decomposition will likely expand beyond the tropics.
“We found that termite detection and wood consumption were very sensitive to temperature. This result has huge implications for understanding carbon storage,” said Zalamea, also a research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.
Global experiment on wood block decay in lowland tropical forest on Barro Colorado Island, Panama.
Photos by Paul Camilo Zalamea.
For the study, published in the journal Science, lead author Amy Zanne (University of Miami) and collaborators examined wood degradation using the same experimental design replicated in a variety of habitats across six continents.
“This paper is the result of massive collaboration. In my research group, we were responsible for conducting the wood decay experiment conducted on Barro Colorado Island (BCI) in Panama,” Zalamea added. “This study is the largest collaboration I’ve worked on, and it has been gratifying to see how the local-level data we collected in Panama relates to the global patterns described in the publication,” added Sarmiento.
Like cows, termites release carbon from wood in the form of methane and carbon dioxide, which are two of the most important greenhouse gases. Therefore, extensions in termite distribution may increasingly contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.
“Prior to the publication of our work, little was known about the climate sensitivity of termites in wood decomposition; now we know that termites are very temperature sensitive, far more so than microbes, which are widely known in the literature as key players in wood decomposition,” Zalamea added. “This result is extremely relevant as it shows how termites have been overlooked in the past, and it improves our ability to better understand the global carbon cycle,” Sarmiento added.
Adapted from the University of Miami press release by Paul-Camilo Zalamea, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Integrative Biology, and Carolina Sarmiento, Research Assistant, Department of Integrative Biology
