Description
With biomass densities comparable to large ungulates and megaherbivores, termites play a key functional role in many tropical savanna ecosystems. This study focuses on vegetated termite mounds (termitaria) constructed by the Termitidae species Macrotermes herus. We studied how resource rich termitaria affect graminoid herbs (Poaceae and Cyperaceae), forbs and woody species composition and diversity. The density of termitaria explained 89% of the variation in dense thickets in the area. Fire tolerant Acacia species dominated the open savanna while fire sensitive species like Grewia spp. and the succulent Euphorbia candelabrum were restricted to termite mounds. Termitaria plots had four times the mean number of woody species and supported three times as many forb species as the adjacent savanna. For woody species, both the Shannon–Wiener index and the Shannon evenness index were higher on temitaria than on the savanna. There were no differences for graminoid herbs, except for the Shannon evenness index which was higher on termitaria. Our results indicate that graminoid herb richness peaks at lower productivity levels than trees and forbs in savanna ecosystems, as also recently found in temperate areas.
Data Records
The data in this occurrence resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 1,054 records.
This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.
Versions
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How to cite
Researchers should cite this work as follows:
Moe, Stein R., Ragnhild Mobæk, and Anne Kjersti Narmo. "Mound building termites contribute to savanna vegetation heterogeneity." Norwegian University of Life sciences, NMBU
Rights
Researchers should respect the following rights statement:
The publisher and rights holder of this work is Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0) License.
GBIF Registration
This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: d5a8d3f2-9bad-4724-b793-daf78f8bca29. Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by GBIF Norway.
Keywords
Occurrence; Observation; Biodiversity; termitaria; woody plants; forbs; graminoids
Contacts
- Author ●
- Originator ●
- Point Of Contact
- Author
- Author
Geographic Coverage
Uganda, Lake Mburo National Park
| Bounding Coordinates | South West [-1.977, 29.136], North East [4.39, 35.244] |
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Temporal Coverage
| Start Date / End Date | 2001-01-01 / 2004-01-01 |
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Bibliographic Citations
- Moe, Stein R., Ragnhild Mobæk, and Anne Kjersti Narmo. "Mound building termites contribute to savanna vegetation heterogeneity." Plant Ecology 202.1 (2009): 31.
Additional Metadata
| Alternative Identifiers | d5a8d3f2-9bad-4724-b793-daf78f8bca29 |
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| https://ipt.gbif.no/resource?r=uganda-woodly |