Termite mound soil properties in West Bengal, India

Abstract

Termites are ecosystem engineers, they play a major role in the biotransformation and modification of soil physicochemical and morphological properties. This study was conducted to evaluate the explored and compared physicochemical and morphological characteristics of soil between termite mounds and surrounding surface soil. Therefore, this study, especially emphasizes the impacts of the mound soil on the surrounding surface soil properties and also to find out the difference between the mound soil properties and surrounding surface soil properties at different soil depth, and characteristic of termite mounds. This study unveils that mound soil properties are directly proportional to the surrounding surface soil properties except for porosity and dispersion ratio. But mound soil properties are not significantly affecting all surface soil properties. The termites have a significant role to change soil physicochemical and morphological properties and there is a significant difference in soil physicochemical properties between mound and surrounding surface soil. However, relatively greater bulk density, clay content, soil pH, organic carbon, nitrogen, exchangeable calcium, exchangeable magnesium, exchangeable sodium, total exchangeable base cations and cation exchange capacity in mound soil than surrounding surface soil. But the relatively lesser value of porosity, dispersion ratio, exchangeable potassium, phosphorus, exchangeable acidity, and C: N ratio is found in mound soil than surrounding surface soil. Conical shaped mounds have greater nutrient concentration than surrounding surface soil. It also highlighted that most of the termite mound consists of trees and bushes containing 8–21 hole or chamber. The termite mounds have granular structure and particle shape are rounded to subrounded, which make them different from surrounding areas. This study suggests and statistically prove that termites have a significant effect on soil properties, they produce physicochemically more quality soil and have an influence on surrounding soil properties.