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A32 FEATURE
Thursday 6 december 2018

In Brazil backlands, termites built millions of dirt mounds

By VICTOR CAIVANO tent of the formations via
PETER PRENGAMAN spatial mapping.
Associated Press “The mounds go on forev-
PALMEIRAS, Brazil (AP) — er in every direction,” said
Roy Funch, an American Funch, who initially came to
botanist who has lived and Brazil as a Peace Corps vol-
worked in Brazil’s hard- unteer in 1977 and stayed.
scrabble northeast for de- The mounds are also very
cades, long looked at huge old. Radioactive testing
cone-shaped mounds of determined they ranged
mud in the distance and in age from 690 to 3,820
wondered. years.
What built them? How “It could have been a gi-
many were there? How ant termite (that built the
long had they been there? mounds),” joked Luciano
After years of failing to Oliveira, a local who lives
generate interest in the in a house made with earth
mounds, a chance meet- taken from a mound. “No-
ing with an English expert body knows.”
on social insects, Stephen While many people view
Martin, led to remarkable termites as pests because
discoveries: There are over some species eat wood,
200 million mounds built and thus homes, the social
by termites that stretch A soldier termite with large pincers stands guard while smaller worker termites gather dead insects are also some of
across 88,800 square miles leaves and cut them into pieces near Lencois, Brazil, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. the world’s best engineers,
(230,000 square kilometers), Associated Press building vast networks of
about the size of Great Brit- underground tunnels and
ain. because over years of be- Salford in England. A few chuck earth from under- huge heaps of dirt.
What’s more, some of the ing baked in the hot sun, years ago, Martin was in ground, where they build An Associated Press jour-
dirt heaps are nearly 4,000 the already-hard dirt and northeastern Brazil studying their tunnels. nalist who accompanied
years old. clay become like stone. honey bees and ants in the “These are just waste Funch to watch the noctur-
“While the Romans were Poor people in the area state of Bahia. He, too, was heaps,” said Martin. “Un- nal termites at work saw sol-
building their columns, use chunks of the mounds curious about the mounds. der normal circumstances dier termites about a half-
their buildings, these ter- to build adobe houses. “I was intrigued because of we wouldn’t see them be- inch long and with large
mites were building their Funch says he wrote two their patterns,” he said. cause they wouldn’t persist pincers stand guard while
mounds,” Funch said, add- articles about the mounds By chance, Martin and for such a long time.” smaller workers gathered
ing that the dirt piles rep- in Brazilian publications, Funch met next to a river In more humid areas where dead leaves and cut them
resent the largest biocon- but they didn’t draw any in Lencois, a small town in the same species lives, in smaller pieces, making
struction of any species attention. Without exper- Bahia about 30 miles (50 ki- such as the Amazon, the “click, click, click” sounds
other than humans. tise in insects or the world lometers) west of the edge mounds are eroded by rain as they worked. When a
The mounds, seen in vari- of scientific publishing, he of the mound area. and wind. But the Caat- flashlight was shined on the
ous places in a vast desert- wasn’t sure how to take his When Martin mentioned inga ecoregion gets rainfall termites for a few seconds,
like region called the Caat- research to the next level. seeing the mounds while only a few weeks a year. they scurried down small
inga, stand between 6 and Asking local people didn’t he was driving around, The desert shrubland veg- holes.
13 feet (2 to 4 meters) high help. Funch told him: “You just etation covers and camou- Rob Pringle, a Princeton
and are spaced roughly “Some would say they met the only guy in Brazil flages the mounds in large biology professor who has
equally apart — between are termites, some would who is working on these swaths of the area, one studied termites and their
52 and 72 feet (16 to 22 say ants, some would say: mounds.” of the reasons they were mounds in Kenya, Mozam-
meters). ‘Well, they have always The two teamed up, and essentially hiding in plain bique and Namibia, said
To landowners who clear been there. They are part their research was pub- sight. fighting between termite
brush to plant crops, the of nature,’” Funch said. lished Nov. 19 in Current Bi- Funch said improvements colonies can lead to pat-
mounds are a nuisance. Enter Martin, an entomolo- ology. in Google Earth’s imag- terns in the mounds they
Bulldozing them is difficult gist at the University of The pair concluded the ing in recent years helped produce.q
mounds were built by Syn- them understand the ex-
termes dirus, a large ter-
mite species that feeds
on leaves and lives under-
ground. While the termites
are found in the region,
the researchers didn’t find
them actively working in
the larger mounds, but in-
stead along the edges of
areas with mounds.
Cutting into several
mounds, they found only a
small tube-like hole going
to the top of each one, not
Giant termite mounds cover a field near Palmeiras, Brazil, Sat- an extensive pattern of tun-
urday, Nov. 24, 2018. nels throughout. That sug- American botanist Roy Funch sits on top of a giant termite
Associated Press gested the termites were mound near Palmeiras, Brazil, Saturday, Nov. 24, 2018.
Associated Press
simply finding a place to