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Termites Weakening FL Trees Before Hurricane Season

Tim Cowley
These flying alates were collected as they came out of their nests in the ground during the early days of the rainy season.

A new University of Floridastudy suggests that there could be even more felled trees the next time a hurricane makes landfall in the state — not because of the rise of super storms or stronger wind conditions but because of termites.

That’s right. The tiny, wood-boring insects could be the reason why many more trees fall over.

That's according to the research of Dr. Thomas Chouvenc. The UF/IFAS assistant professor of urban entomology joins Gulf Coast Live to talk about the invasive species infesting Florida trees.

For the visually minded, UF/IFAS also has a map of termite populations near your neighborhood.

Rachel Iacovone is a reporter and associate producer of Gulf Coast Live for WGCU News. Rachel came to WGCU as an intern in 2016, during the presidential race. She went on to cover Florida Gulf Coast University students at President Donald Trump's inauguration on Capitol Hill and Southwest Floridians in attendance at the following day's Women's March on Washington.Rachel was first contacted by WGCU when she was managing editor of FGCU's student-run media group, Eagle News. She helped take Eagle News from a weekly newspaper to a daily online publication with TV and radio branches within two years, winning the 2016 Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Award for Best Use of Multimedia in a cross-platform series she led for National Coming Out Day. She also won the Mark of Excellence Award for Feature Writing for her five-month coverage of an FGCU student's transition from male to female.As a WGCU reporter, she produced the first radio story in WGCU's Curious Gulf Coast project, which answered the question: Does SWFL Have More Cases of Pediatric Cancer?Rachel graduated from Florida Gulf Coast University with a bachelor's degree in journalism.