“Unraveling Nature’s Shocking Strategy: How a Tropical Tree in Panama Harnesses Lightning to Claim Its Territory”
“Seeing that there are trees that get struck by lightning and they’re fine was just mind blowing,” Evan Gora, a forest ecologist at the Cary Institute and the lead author of a recent study about D. oleifera, stated in a press release.
After observing this phenomenon multiple times, Gora and his team of researchers got to work analyzing the properties of D. oleifera and what sort of impact, both positive and negative, lightning strikes had on the species. Shockingly, their research provided evidence of a tree evolving to get struck by lightning.
How Does ‘Dipteryx Oleifera’ Use Lightning To Its Advantage?
Beginning in 2021, the research team used historical data from lightning location systems and field data to revisit 93 trees that had been directly struck by lightning at the Barro Colorado Nature Monument in central Panama in the decades prior.
An antenna placed in the region detected radio waves from lightning strikes, giving researchers a precise location of the strike that would later be confirmed with drones.
As detailed in a recent study published in New Phytologist, the team studied tree survival rates, trunk condition, and the presence of parasitic vines. The study compared nine D. oleifera trees with 84 others and found that D. oleifera possessed a remarkable capacity for surviving lightning strikes.
Evan Gora/Cary Institute of Ecosystem StudiesTechnician Cesar Gutierrez climbs a lightning strike tower in the Barro Colorado study area.
All nine of the D. oleifera that were directly hit by lightning survived, while over half of the trees from other species died within two years. On average, 9.2 neighboring trees were killed whenever lightning struck a D. oleifera, and almost 80 percent of its parasitic vines perished as well.
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