Research Output Prize 2019-20

Dr Louise ASHTON studies rainforest biodiversity and environmental change. The collaborative research paper: ‘Termites mitigate the effects of drought in tropical forest’, published in Science in 2019, applied a large-scale manipulation experiment in a tropical rainforest ecosystem to understand the role of termites. This work showed for the first time the wide range of termite-mediated buffering effects during a drought – including higher soil moisture, soil nutrient heterogeneity, decomposition in the presence of termites, with positive knockon effects for seedling survival rates. Despite our increased understanding of the importance of biodiversity, loss continues to accelerate due to human activities. These results show biodiversity can act as an ecological insurance policy in times of rapid environmental change.