Hello everyone and welcome to the In Defensive Plants podcast, the official podcast of

Indefensiveplants.com.

What's up? This is your host, Matt. Welcome to the show. How's everyone doing this week?

Today we're talking about plants as habitat, and not just any plants. I am talking about giant

trees, specifically ones that are hollow. Now, this podcast was inspired by National Moth Week, which we're coming up on here, and for the first time, in a long time, I've been able to time a podcast with something going on in society at the time that it's happening, so this is exciting. Joining us today is Dr. Andrei Surikoff from the Florida Museum of Natural History. You will remember him from a previous episode on Crotillaria and their moths, and Dr. Larry Reeves, an entomologist for the Florida Medical Entomology Lab.

Now, among other things, Dr. Sourikov is a moth specialist, and Dr. Larry Reeves is a mosquito

specialist, which is really confusing if you don't hear what we're about to talk about

today. This whole podcast was inspired by a few observations by both of these scientists

that hollow trees seem to offer a really interesting habitat for different species of moths and mosquitoes.

And I'm going to let them go into detail.

Please do not fear, hollow trees are not a breeding ground for disease-carrying mosquitoes.

We'll get into that in more detail.

But it is really

cool to think about hollow trees, especially in the context of habitat, because I don't think dead

trees, snags, hollowed trees get the credit they deserve. Now, a lot of trees are hollow. You'd actually

be very surprised to know just how many in the surrounding landscape are hollowed out, and that's

natural. That's something that trees do, and it's not necessarily bad for the tree, although some sort of rots can cause a lot of issues, but generally the heart rot, the rot, the rotting of the dead wood on the inside, is done by fungi that don't kill the tree. And what's more, all of those nutrients go back into the soil underneath. There's plenty of roots down there. the trees can reabsorbsorbed some of what they had invested into all of that non-photosynthetic tissue. But it also then creates a lot of habitat for different animals. Of course, you can grow up thinking about hollow trees with raccoons in them or bats living in them. And that's really cool to think about because all of those animals are defecating. They're also giving back to the tree. But hollow trees are also habitat for a lot of other animals, and that's really what the crux of this is going to be about today.

And before you think that they're a danger to society, remember that physically speaking, a hollow cylinder is more structurally sound, or at least more sturdy, than a solid cylinder.

So a hollow tree actually is better able to withstand the elements than the same tree if it were completely solid all the way through.

I'm really excited for you to hear this discussion, but before we get to that, we have a message from the sponsor that made today's episode possible.

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