Overall termite impact on wood decomposition
Comparisons of the termite exclusion and access treatments strongly
support the view that termites play an important role in coarse wood
mass loss (Fig. 2), not only in tropical (see Introduction) but also in
subtropical forests. Specifically, after 18 months of incubation of the
wood samples, the termite access treatment resulted in an average
cumulative mass loss of 26.6% (range 1.5-84.6%) at PT and 21.1%
(range 1.18-68.8%) at TT across species. In contrast, mass loss without
termite consumption was on average 14.7% (range 1.1-60.7%) at PT and
12.7% (range 1.0-45.7%) at TT (Fig. S2a,b). The difference between
termite exclusion and access treatments was generally high during the
first 12 months and then decreased at 18 months in both sites (Fig. 2,
Fig. S2a,b).