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October 18, 2018 02:40 pm
Original Link: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/aJmPSyO5juU/one-of-the-worlds-largest-organisms-is-shrinking
One of the World's Largest Organisms is Shrinking
An anonymous reader shares a report: The Pando aspen grove, located in central Utah, is the largest organism on the planet by weight. From the surface, it may look like a forest that spans more than 100 U.S. football fields, but each tree shares the exact same DNA and is connected to its clonal brethren through an elaborate underground root system. Although not quite as large in terms of area as the massive Armillaria gallica fungus in Michigan, Pando is much heavier, weighing in at more than 6 million kilograms. Now, researchers say, the grove is in danger, being slowly eaten away by mule deer and other herbivores -- and putting the fate of its ecosystem in jeopardy. "This is a really unusual habitat type," says Luke Painter, an ecologist at Oregon State University in Corvallis who was not involved with the research. "A lot of animals depend on it." [...] Scientists first noticed the Pando shrinking in the late '90s. They suspected elk, cattle, and most prominently deer were eating the new shoots, so in the new study Rogers and colleagues divided the forest into three experimental groups. One section was completely unfenced, allowing animals to forage freely on the baby aspen. A second section was fenced and left alone. And a third section was fenced and then treated in some places with strategies to spur aspen growth, such as shrub removal and controlled burning; in other places it was left untreated. The results were surprising: Simply keeping the deer out was enough to allow the grove to successfully recover, the team reports today in PLOS ONE. Even in the fenced-off plots where there was no burning or shrub removal, young trees were thriving.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Original Link: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/aJmPSyO5juU/one-of-the-worlds-largest-organisms-is-shrinking
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