<
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/11/3/the-worlds-oldest-termite-colony-holds-secrets-to-the-past-and-future>
"On a cloudless September morning in Buffelsrivier, a desolate corner of
Namaqualand some 530km (329 miles) north of Cape Town, Stellenbosch University
soil scientists Cathy Clarke and Michele Francis watch as a giant Volvo
excavator tears into the dry ochre earth. Over the next five hours the
excavator works hard to dig a trench, 60m (197 feet) long and 3m (10 feet)
deep, through the heart of a giant, low-slung mound known locally as a
heuweltjie or “little hill”. It’s all part of a university project to
understand why the groundwater in the area is so salty.
Once the digger has returned to the nearby town of Springbok, population
12,790, Clarke, Francis, and a bevvy of grad students begin to explore the
trench. They start at its extremities, what Francis describes as the “boring
bits”, feeling the soil and looking for signs of life. As they move inwards,
they start to notice small conglomerations of bewildered southern harvester
termites (
Microhodotermes viator) furiously trying to repair the damage done
to their home.
At the centre of the trench, two metres (6.6 feet) below ground level, they
encounter “this huge nest that looks like a giant alien”, Francis tells Al
Jazeera. Clarke nods in agreement: “The moment I saw it I knew we were
witnessing something special. It was just so obviously ancient … And alive.”
Once they’d taken some time to simply marvel at the work achieved by these 1cm
(0.4 inch)-long creatures, they moved on to the business at hand: taking soil
samples. “I delegated the task to a young male student with a pickaxe,” laughs
Clarke. “But he couldn’t get the steel blade to penetrate the sides of the
trench.” The ground was so hard, according to John Midgley – an entomologist at
the KwaZulu-Natal Museum who was not involved in the project – because it was
part of an “ancient mound” created by termites over thousands of years.
Eventually, after lots of huffing and puffing, the grad student was able to
obtain a sample the size of a soccer ball, which was sent for testing.
This kind of challenge is all in a day’s work for soil scientists, says Clarke,
who describes her discipline as “a fun mix of everything from bucket science to
high precision X-ray techniques”.
Francis tells me that when they got back to their hotel in Springbok at the end
of the day, the cleaner reported them to the manager: “She thought we were zama
zamas [South African slang for illegal miners] because our rooms were coated in
orange dust,” she says, adding, “I guess she [the cleaner] had a point.”"
Via
Fix the News:
https://fixthenews.com/276-nauseously-optimistic/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
