Overall termite impact on wood decomposition
Comparisons of the termite exclusion and access treatments strongly support the view that termites play an important role in coarse wood mass loss (Fig. 2), not only in tropical (see Introduction) but also in subtropical forests. Specifically, after 18 months of incubation of the wood samples, the termite access treatment resulted in an average cumulative mass loss of 26.6% (range 1.5-84.6%) at PT and 21.1% (range 1.18-68.8%) at TT across species. In contrast, mass loss without termite consumption was on average 14.7% (range 1.1-60.7%) at PT and 12.7% (range 1.0-45.7%) at TT (Fig. S2a,b). The difference between termite exclusion and access treatments was generally high during the first 12 months and then decreased at 18 months in both sites (Fig. 2, Fig. S2a,b).