快猫短视频

IT IS easy to measure the damage that logging does to forests, but monitoring
their recovery is expensive and hugely time-consuming.

Fortunately, conservationists may be able to rely on a cheap set of tools to
help them: ants and bees. Ants are highly sensitive to the state of the soil,
and bees are very particular about the species of tree they pollinate or nest
in. So these insects alone give a comprehensive picture of the health of
recovering forests, says a team of German and Malaysian researchers.

鈥淵ou wouldn鈥檛 need any indicators to see that a rainforest was destroyed by
logging,鈥� says Karl Linsenmair, a biologist at the University of W眉rzburg
who is heading the research. 鈥淏ut when it comes to reforestation, one needs an
acid test to see whether the programme is on the right track again. It is
totally unclear whether sustainable forestry is really working in the
迟谤辞辫颈肠蝉.鈥�

The team is studying how ant and bee communities respond to logging by
looking at a range of environments, from undisturbed woodland to heavily logged
land, in the 55 000-hectare Deramakot Forest Reserve in the Malaysian part of
Borneo. The number of ant species in an ecosystem depends on the microclimate,
soil structure and vegetation, all of which are influenced by logging
techniques, which damage the forest floor and lead to erosion. The team believes
that an analysis of ant communities will reveal any damage to a forest
floor.

Damaged forest will have fewer suitable nesting sites for bees and the
absence of certain bee species would suggest that the trees they prefer are
depleted.