Cary-led study reveals lightning benefits some trees by killing off parasitic vines and opening up the canopy.
Cary-led study reveals lightning benefits some trees by killing off parasitic vines and opening up the canopy.
Getting zapped with millions of volts of electricity may not sound like a healthy activity, but for some trees, it is. A new study, published in New Phytologist, reports that some tropical tree species are not only able to tolerate lightning strikes, but benefit from them. The trees may have even evolved to act as lightning rods.
The research was led by Evan Gora, a forest ecologist at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. Gora studies how lightning impacts biodiversity and carbon storage in Panama’s tropical forests.
Lightning kills hundreds of millions of trees per year. But in 2015, while working in Panama, Gora and his colleagues came across a Dipteryx oleifera tree that had survived a strike with little damage — even though the jolt had been strong enough to blast a parasitic vine out of its crown and kill more than a dozen neighboring trees.
“Seeing that there are trees that get struck by lightning and they’re fine was just mind blowing,” Gora recalled. Over time, the team encountered other D. oleifera trees thriving after getting hit, so they decided to take a closer look.
Read more at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
Image: Technician Cesar Gutierrez climbs a tower to detect and locate lightning strikes in the study area. After detection, drones and on-the-ground teams monitor the strike’s impacts. (Credit: Evan Gora / Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies)
