Termite Mounds Lead to 'Islands of Fertility' (7 of 12) (IMAGE)

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Termite Mounds Lead to 'Islands of Fertility' (7 of 12)

Caption

An Odontotermes termite mound (circular treeless patch with short green grass on the right-hand side of the image) is at Mpala Research Centre in central Kenya. These termite mounds are inconspicuous from above-ground but have many important effects on ecosystem functioning. 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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