page_title: Eucalyptus gomphocephala
section_title: Ecology
hierarchical_section_title: Eucalyptus gomphocephala / Ecology
caption_attribution_description: English: Taken in the Ludlow state forest
context_page_description: Eucalyptus gomphocephala, known as tuart, is a species of tree, one of the six forest giants of Southwest Australia. Tuart forest was common on the Swan coastal plain, until the valuable trees were felled for export and displaced by the urban development around Perth, Western Australia. The wood is dense, hard, water resistant and resists splintering, and found many uses when it was available. Remnants of tuart forest occur in state reserves and parks, the tree has occasionally been introduced to other regions of Australia and overseas. Remaining trees are vulnerable to phytophthora dieback, an often fatal disorder, including a previously unknown species discovered during analysis of dead specimens.
context_section_description: The tree is moderately tolerant of saline soil and salt-laden winds. It is also drought and frost tolerant. 
  Individual trees may live over four hundred years.
  Experimental cultivation in the 1930s of the species identified that it was able to grow in areas of low rainfall, as little as thirteen inches per annum. They were introduced to France and grown extensively there by the end of the nineteenth century,
  The biodiversity of tuart forest is rich, containing unique assemblages of plants, fungi and animals.
  A 2009 survey of endophytic fungi on woody species at two tuart woodlands, sampling acacia Acacia cochlearis, A. rostellifera, the sheoak Allocasuarina fraseriana, peppermint Agonis flexuosa, Banksia grandis, sandalwood Santalum acuminatum, and eucalypts jarrah Eucalyptus marginata and tuart, found around three quarters of isolates were taxa of the family Botryosphaeriaceae, eighty percent of which was the species Neofusicoccum australe. Four new taxa, Dothiorella moneti, Dothiorella santali, Neofusicoccum pennatisporum, and Aplosporella yalgorensis, resulted from the analysis of the survey. The species Botryosphaeria dothidea was also isolated from acacia and jarrah samples.
  Tuart gives its name to a description of an ecological community, as the dominant species of the canopy at Tuart (Eucalyptus gomphocephala) 
  woodlands and forests of the Swan Coastal Plain (Tuart woodlands and forests). The area where these occur is noted as a greatly reduced, and those remaining are fragmented populations of variable quality. A proposal submitted in 2017 recommended these be listed as critically endangered in the nation's register of threatened ecological communities. Tuart may also occur in the threatened community Banksia woodlands of the Swan Coastal Plain.
  The species is vulnerable to dieback, associated with fungal species of the genus Phytophthora. A study in 2007 of infected or deceased tuart trees and woodland identified isolates of Phytophthora cinnamomi, already implicated in the decline of tuart, and that of organisms—previously diagnosed as that of the Phytophthora citricola complex—was identified as a new species Phytophthora multivora.
  Damage to reproductive process by a native predator was first noticed at the end of the nineteenth century. Larvae deposited in flowers by the tuart bud weevil Haplonyx tibialis (Curculionidae) feed on the tissue in the operculum, the female weevil having caused the budding flower to become partly or completely damaged after laying a single egg; the larvae eventually emerge by chewing through the base of the bud.
  Tuart forest persisted in situ through the last glacial maximum, and extended its range thirty kilometres to the west as the coastline became exposed by lower sea levels. The historical phylogeography of the tuart forest indicates the moderating influence of the marine climate in the Southwest Australian Floristic Region during a period of aridification and other severe climate changes elsewhere on the continent.
caption: Ludlow forest
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