Researchers ready to study how these parasitic vines interact with forest ecosystems

Jun 2, 2014 20:13 GMT  ·  By

Come July, a group of researchers led by ecologist Steve Yanoviak with the University of Louisville in the United States will travel to Panama's Barro Colorado Island and debut a two-year investigation into how lianas interact with forest ecosystems.

Specifically, the specialists hope to collect data that would tell them whether these parasitic woody vines have evolved to act as natural lightning rods, and could therefore be argued to help protect the forests that they smother.

Ecologist Steve Yanoviak and fellow researchers did no settle on the Barro Colorado Island as the best place for them to carry out this investigation simply because they thought that the name of this patch of land had a nice ring to it.

On the contrary, Nature tells us that, over the past decades, forests covering this island in Panama have come to be engulfed in lianas. More precisely, the number of trees sporting such parasitic vines is said to have upped from 32% in 1968 to 75% in 2007.

Steve Yanoviak and colleagues explain that, according to information provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the United States, ongoing changes in our planet's weather patterns are likely to up the number of lightning-triggered fires in tropical forests.

Thus, a 4.2 degrees Celsius increase in the global average temperature is expected to translate into a 30% increase in the number of lightning events documented on a global scale on a yearly basis, and evidence indicates that climate change is to foster more frequent and more extreme droughts.

Taken together, these two phenomena might lead to widespread destruction of tropical forests. Hence, Steve Yanoviak is looking to figure out whether or not the presence of lianas might help deliver some benefits when it comes to protecting ecosystems by keeping trees safe from lightning strikes.

“Nobody has ever thought of lianas as anything but a structural parasite. But they might have this unforeseen secondary effect of protecting trees against strikes,” the University of Louisville ecologist told the press in a recent interview.

Experiments carried out thus far have shown that, when compared to tree branches, lianas do in fact have a lower resistance to electricity. What Steve Yanoviak and fellow researchers wish to do is try to determine whether this lower resistance makes it possible for the parasitic woody vines to channel the current resulting from a lighting strike.

Should their theory be proven accurate, this would help make better predictions concerning how rainforests will transform over the course of the following years as a result of changes in environmental conditions.