Termite Mounds Lead to 'Islands of Fertility' (10 of 12) (IMAGE)

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Termite Mounds Lead to 'Islands of Fertility' (10 of 12)

Caption

Termite mounds (round patches of short green grass within a matrix of taller, yellower grass) are regularly spaced in a polka-dot configuration due to competition with neighboring termite colonies. This photograph was taken from a hot air balloon (see shadow, upper left) in Kenya's Masai Mara reserve. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the Feb. 6, 2015 issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by J.A. Bonachela at Princeton University in Princeton, NJ, and colleagues was titled, "Termite mounds can increase the robustness of dryland ecosystems to climatic change."

Credit

[Credit: Rob Pringle]

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