A HOLLOW tree, you might reasonably suspect, is a dying tree. But often that is not the case, especially in the tropics. Lots of trees in tropical forests remain alive long after their cores have rotted away—a tribute, it would seem, to their resilience. However, hollow trees are so common that a thoughtful ecologist might wonder if there were more to it than mere cussedness in the face of adversity. Perhaps hollowness is actually an arboreal advantage.
Christian Voigt of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, in Berlin, is just such an ecologist and he did, indeed, have that thought. And, as he reports in this month’s Biotropica, he has now turned thought into action with some ingenious observations.
Dr Voigt developed a hypothesis based on three facts. First, the soils of many tropical forests are near-bereft of vital nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous. The huge mass of plants in such forests sucks these elements from the ground, and competition for what remains is intense. Second, hollow trees are favoured roosting...
from The Economist: Science and technology http://ift.tt/1Jlt9ym
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