Lightning damage facilitates beetle colonization of tropical trees

Lightning is an important source of natural disturbance in many forests.  Lightning damage to trees facilitates beetle infestations in some temperate forests, but lightning-beetle associations remain unexplored in the tropics.  The goal of this study was to estimate the abundance of beetles infesting lightning-damaged trees in a Panamanian forest.  We compared the number of beetle holes on tree trunks between tropical trees in ten lightning strike sites and ten control sites.  Lightning-struck trees had 370% more beetle holes than control trees.  The abundance of beetle holes increased with increasing total crown dieback among both control and lightning-damaged trees, and with larger tree diameter among lightning-struck trees.  Beetle holes also were more abundant in trunk sections of lightning-damaged trees located directly below a damaged section of the crown.  The results of this study suggest that lightning damage facilitates beetle colonization in tropical forest trees and provide a basis for investigations of the effects of lightning-caused disturbance on beetle population dynamics and assemblage structure.