Vast 4,000-Year-Old Spatial Pattern of Termite Mounds/Curr. Biol., Nov. 19, 2018 (Vol. 28, Issue 22)

A vast array of 200 million termite mounds have existed in NE Brazil for up to 4,000 years. These mounds cover 230,000 km2, an area similar to that of the UK, and are the result of the excavation of 10 km3 of soil during the construction of a massive underground network of tunnels. A combination of time and interconnectivity of the tunnels has allowed a regular (over-dispersed) pattern of mounds to emerge through self-organizational processes driven by episodic leaf fall.

Check out the paper at

S.J. Martin, R.R. Funch, P.R. Hanson, and E.-H.E. Yoo (2018). Vast 4000-year-old termite population persists in Northeast Brazil. Curr. Biol. 28.

And read more great research at

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