The Hidden Life of Trees_ What They Feel, How They Commnicate

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sounds made by the claws of martins or squirrels. The sounds can be heard high up in the tree, which gives the birds a chance to escape. If there are young in the nest, they can try to distract the attackers, though such attempts are usually doomed to failure. But at least the parents escape with their lives and can compensate for their loss by raising a second brood. Acoustics are not so important for bats, for they have completely different concerns. Some species of these tiny mammals need lots of tree cavities at the same time to raise their young. In the case of Bechstein’s bats, which live in Europe and western Asia, small groups of females raise their offspring together. They spend only a few days in the same quarters before it’s time to move on. The reason for this is parasites. If the bats were to spend the whole season in the same cavity, there would be a parasite population explosion and they would torment the winged nocturnal hunters mercilessly. Short moving cycles take care of this by simply leaving the parasites behind. Owls don’t fit very well into woodpecker cavities, and so they must be patient for a few more years. Over time, the tree continues to rot, and sometimes the trunk splits open a bit more so that the entrance gets bigger. And sometimes there is a series of woodpecker cavities up the trunk that speeds the owls’ entrance. These are like woodpecker apartments stacked one on top of the other. As the process of decay progresses, they slowly merge into each other, and when that happens, they are ripe for the arrival of the tawny owl and his friends. And what about the tree? Its efforts to defend itself are in vain. And it’s too late to mount an attack against fungi anyway, because by now the floodgates have been open to them for years. But the tree can lengthen its life-span considerably if it at least manages to get a grip on its external wounds. If it manages to do this, it will continue to rot on the inside; however, externally it will be as stable as a hollow steel pipe and can survive for another hundred years. You can spot these attempts at repair if you see bulges around the edges of a woodpecker hole. Despite its best efforts, the tree rarely makes headway on closing the entrance. Usually, the merciless builder simply pecks the new wood away. The rotting trunk now becomes home to a complex living community. Wood ants move in and chew the moldy wood to make their papery nests. They soak the nest walls with honeydew, the sugary excretions of aphids. Fungi bloom on this substrate, and their fibrous web stabilizes the nest. A multitude of beetles are drawn to the mushy, rotten interior of the cavity. Their larvae can take years to develop, and therefore, they need stable, long-term accommodations. This is why they choose trees, which take decades to die and, therefore, remain intact for a long time. The presence of beetle larvae ensures that the cavity remains attractive to fungi and other insects, which keep a constant supply of excrement and sawdust raining down into the rot. The excrement of bats, owls, and dormice also drops down into the dark depths. And so the rotten wood is constantly supplied with nutrients, which feed species such as the blood-necked click beetle,47 or the larvae of the European hermit beetle, a big black beetle that can grow up to 1.5 inches long. Hermit beetles are very reluctant to move and prefer to spend their whole lives in a dark hole at the base of a rotting tree trunk. And because these beetles rarely fly or walk, whole generations of the same family can live for decades in the same tree. And this explains why it is so important to keep old trees. If they are cleared away, these little black guys can’t just wander over to the next tree; they simply don’t have the energy to do that. Even if one day the tree gives up and breaks off in a storm, it has still served the community well. Even though scientists haven’t fully researched the relationships yet, we do know that higher species diversity stabilizes the forest ecosystem. The more species there are around, the less chance there is that a single one will take over to the detriment of the others, because there’s always a candidate on hand to counteract the menace. And even the dead tree trunk can offer a valuable service managing
water for living trees merely because it is there, as we’ve already seen in chapter 17, “Woody Climate Control.”
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foreword by TIM FLANNERY PETER WOHL
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What They Feel, How They Communicat
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Notes Index
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INTRODUCTION TO THE ENGLISH EDITION
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BIRCH
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that. According to Massimo Maffei f
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are up against. The saliva of each
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pines, or whether something was up.
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each tree can grow into the best tr
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the cones of Spruce & Co. just don
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5 — THE TREE LOTTERY — TREES MA
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even for them, based purely on stat
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sorely tested. As I mentioned in ch
Page 28 and 29: 7 — FOREST ETIQUETTE — IN THE F
Page 30 and 31: PINE
Page 32 and 33: more slowly, clearly make better us
Page 34 and 35: 9 — UNITED WE STAND, — DIVIDED
Page 36 and 37: When there is a lack of nitrogen, t
Page 38 and 39: — THE MYSTERIES OF — MOVING WAT
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Page 42 and 43: girth—exactly and, therefore, doe
Page 44 and 45: 12
Page 46 and 47: their native forests, oaks growing
Page 48 and 49: — SPECIALISTS — TREES CAN GROW
Page 50 and 51: might grow into an imposing tree. B
Page 52 and 53: — TREE OR NOT TREE? — WHAT IS A
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Page 56 and 57: pseudocentipedes are not nearly as
Page 58 and 59: 16
Page 60 and 61: plants do this, not just trees. Eve
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Page 64 and 65: find it fascinating how much spruce
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Page 68 and 69: of an organism that doesn’t like
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Page 72 and 73: has on us: festering wounds appear
Page 74 and 75: as they wait for their turn to grow
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Page 80 and 81: 21
Page 82 and 83: shelf made from half a broken plate
Page 84 and 85: — HIBERNATION — IT’S LATE SUM
Page 86 and 87: that combined temperatures slightly
Page 88 and 89: ASPEN
Page 90 and 91: — A SENSE OF TIME — IN MANY LAT
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Page 94 and 95: Now the tree has a problem at the p
Page 96 and 97: — THE SICK TREE — STATISTICALLY
Page 98 and 99: fungus has made it from the sapwood
Page 100 and 101: — LET THERE BE LIGHT — I’VE A
Page 102 and 103: tiny plants compensate for the smal
Page 104 and 105: — STREET KIDS — HAVE YOU EVER w
Page 106 and 107: urban trees, the stump will die qui
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Page 110 and 111: Wouldn’t it make sense to be so t
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Page 114 and 115: temperature, but also the change fr
Page 116 and 117: elevations can afford to waste wate
Page 118 and 119: — TOUGH CUSTOMERS — SO WHY DO t
Page 120 and 121: SPRUCE
Page 122 and 123: — TURBULENT TIMES — IN THE FORE
Page 124 and 125: misfortune. Douglas firs, which are
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characteristics that are completely
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een native to Europe for a long tim
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— HEALTHY FOREST AIR — FOREST A
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happened because the trees were sub
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— WHY IS THE FOREST GREEN? — WH
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in the bright sun, hundreds of micr
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— SET FREE — IN THESE TIMES of
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elaxed view. The plantation trees g
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— MORE THAN JUST — A COMMODITY
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NOTE FROM A FOREST SCIENTIST THE UN
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I VIEW THE fact tha
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www.scientific-american.com/article
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69. S. Boch, et al., “High Plant
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lack-headed cardinal beetle, 55 bla
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Germany, 65, 90, 235, 241 giant hog
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oak milkcap, 50 oak processionary,
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terpenes, 107, 119 thinning, 14, 17
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Copyright © 2015 by Ludwig Verlag,
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The Hidden Life of Trees_ What They Feel, How They Commnicate

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