New paper alert in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution: Assessing the Australian Termite Diversity Anomaly: How Habitat and Rainfall Affect Termite Assemblages!

I worked on this study with the lead author, Becca Clement, as a REU student in the summer of 2018, which was also my first field experience with the Zanne Lab. In this paper, we explore termite abundance and activity along a precipitation gradient in Northern Australia, spanning sites from the savannah to the rainforest. We demonstrate that as our field sites in Australia become drier (less precipitation), termite abundance and activity increases. This contrasts termite occurrence patterns in other tropical locations and may be an artifact of how the continent was colonized by different feeding groups through time. Ultimately, this ‘anomaly’ in Australian termite diversity may have consequences for the strength of ecosystem-level effects that termites have, such as nutrient turnover and decomposition.

Check out the study here!