TERMITES, QUEENS, MOUNDS, COLONIES AND ANIMALS THAT FEED ON THEM

TERMITES

Termites may be the most plentiful animal in the world in terms of mass. In Australia they outweigh all the kangaroos. In Africa they outweigh all the mammals put together. According to one estimate there is about a half ton of termites for every person on earth. According to another estimate a third of the gases linked with global warming may be caused by termite farts. [Source: Glenn D. Prestwich Ph.D., National Geographic, April 1978; Richard Conniff, Smithsonian]

Termites have been around for around 140 million years. Socially, similar to ants but anatomically more similar to cockroaches, they evolved from the same ancestral species that also gave rise to cockroaches and are to have formed the world's first colonies.

There are over 2,000 species of termite. They are found all over the planet. Most species thrive in the tropics were their mounds can spotted almost everywhere.

Termites are blind and are very shy of light. Most have bodies that are so soft and thin that it will dry and he termite will died if it exposed to sunlight for any length of time. They spend most of their underground or inside trees or other wood structures As is true with ants, communication is done with chemical messages called phermones.

Termites and ants are both small, live in colonies and have similar social structure but they are very different creatures and are often arch enemies, with ants often feeding on termites. While termites are related to cockroaches ants are related to wasps. Ants have a hard shells which allows to live above ground. They are genetically identical and sterile so it makes sense from an evolution point of view for them to die for good of colony. Termites on other hand have soft bodies and live mostly underground. They are not genetically identical and scientists are no sure why they evolved trait of sacrificing themselves for the colony.

Websites and Resources on Termites: Termite Database unb.br/ib/zoo/catalog ; Isoptera cals.ncsu.edu/course/ent425/compendium/termites ; Termite article tolweb.org/Isoptera ; Wikipedia article Wikipedia ; Termite article ento.csiro.au/education/insects/isoptera

Websites and Resources on Insects: Insect.org insects.org ; Insect Images.org insectimages.org ; BBC Insects bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Insect ; Insect and Arachnid entomology.umn.edu/cues/4015/morpology ; Wikipedia article Wikipedia ; Virtual Insect home.comcast.net ; National Geographic on Bugs National Geographic ; Smithsonian bug info si.edu/Encyclopedia_SI/nmnh/buginfo ; Entomology for Beginners bijlmakers.com/entomology/begin ; BugGuide bugguide.net ;

Websites and Resources on Animals: ARKive arkive.org Animal Info animalinfo.org ; Animal Picture Archives (do a Search for the Animal Species You Want) animalpicturesarchive ; BBC Animals Finder bbc.co.uk/nature/animals ; Animal Diversity Web animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu ; International Field Guides media.library.uiuc.edu ; animals.com animals.com/tags/animals-z ; Encyclopedia of Life eol.org ; World Wildlife Fund (WWF) worldwildlife.org ; National Geographic National Geographic ; Animal Planet animal.discovery.com ; Wikipedia article on Animals Wikipedia ; Animals.com animals.com ; Endangered Animals iucnredlist.org ; Endangered Species Resource List ucblibraries.colorado.edu ; Biodiversity Heritage Library biodiversitylibrary.org

Termite Colonies

Like ants, termites live in colonies in which the vast majority of the members work their butts off gathering food, tending young, fending off intruders and building living space to support a structure that allows one individuals to reproduce. Termites are unable to live alone. They do everything for the common good of the colony. The entire colony is oriented toward making sure the queen keeps reproducing.

The highly stratified termite colony is made up of white translucent larvae reared in a nursery and watched over minor workers. Major workers collect and carry food and repair and maintain the mound. Minor workers escort the workers and major soldiers defend the nest. All workers are sterile, blind males and all the large-headed soldiers are females. Workers generally are about a quarter of inch long while soldiers are about a half inch long.

Soldiers stand guard at the entrances. They have huge jaws that are so large they can no longer feed themselves and have to be fed by workers. When a threat is perceived the soldiers should the alarms by banging their heads on the walls.

Termite Feeding Behavior

Termites generally feed on dead plant material or food generated from dead plant material. They spend much of their time feeding one another — workers feed each other and feed the soldiers and the queen — and feeding on food grown on each other's feces. Termites make a faint clicking noise when they eat. In Africa, termites consumer more grass that all the wildebeest, Cape buffalo and other savannah animals put together. Some species can "drink" water out of old wood.

Many species eat wood and plant material, defecate the waste and eat that too. The first time food is consumed protozoa and bacteria break down the cellulose into a form that can be easily digested after it is defecated.

Other kinds of termites feed on fungus and fecal pellets produced in fungus gardens made of fungus grown on termite feces excreted by workers who had collected and eaten leaves of grass. Grass and wood and other food consumed by termites contains a lot of cellulose which is low in nutrients and is difficult to digest. The fungus helps break down the grass into digestible forms.

Termite fungus gardens are like artificial rain forests with 90̊F temperatures and 90 percent humidity regardless of he conditions outside the mound. A complex network of chimneys help maintain these conditions. The fecal matter is deposited by workers on honeycomb-like structures in the heart of the nest.

Termite Queens

A fully developed termite queen has to be one of the most grotesque creatures on the planet. About the size of a human index finger, its possesses a head about the same size as other termite attached to a five-inch-long grub-like body has been described as a "mass of ovaries and blood a thousand times heavier than the workers" who spend their life feeding it.

The queen live in a very tight space in the royal chamber. She doesn't move much and is like a reproduction factory. She lays between 5,000 and 30,000 eggs daily, almost everyday. Over her 20 year life span she may lay 200 million eggs. Workers take care of the queen, frequently licked her anus to quickly send her messages throughout the colony.

Phermones emitted by the queen determine which termites will be workers and which will grow thick heads and become soldiers. Other chemical messages are given off to determines the roles of the workers and soldiers within their group When a queen dies the pheronome that keeps her offspring sexually immature vanishes and one of her offspring os capable of becoming a queen.

Termite Mating

When it is time for a new queen to emerge pheromone messages are sent out to the larvae for them to become sexually mature. The resulted winged, reproductive termites known as alates emerge from the nest in a huge swarm.

Birds, frogs, reptiles and ants know when to expect the phenomena and the line up outside the nest waiting for an easy meal. The termites that fly into the air are picked off by birds and those that fall to the ground and gobbled up by ants or cannibalized by other termites. The flight of the alates often takes place the seasonal rains but scientists still don't understand what triggers it.

A few males and females find each other and quickly shed their wings and mate. If the couple can make it underground and they have enough fat to live off until the first eggs are hatched a new colony begins.

Unlike ants and bees which only produce males that die after mating once with the queen, termites produce a king that regularly fertilizes the queen and stays by her side during her entire 20 year lifespan. Kings are about 10 times larger than a worker.

Termite Mounds

In many tropical areas around the world, termites build huge mounds with walls, buttresses, and crenelation. A typical seven-foot-tall mound has a network of tunnels that radiate out all direction for a 160 feet, and occupy a space of 80,000 square feet.

A mound begins when a mated king and queen crawl into the ground and begin producing workers who dig out tunnels with their mouths and use saliva to cement the walls in place. The mounds are designed so that the termites don't have to venture far on the surface, where they are vulnerable to attacks from predators such as anteaters and aardvarks.

At the center of the base of a termite mound is the royal chambers, where the queen reproduces. A 20-year-year-old termite mound built with topsoil by insects that weigh less than a thousandth of an ounce may reach a height of 20 feet and weight of several tons and house several million termites.

The nests within the mounds are arguably the most sophisticated structures built in the animal kingdom. The nests of some termite species contain perfect arches, spiral staircases, ventilation shafts, canopies and even cooling vents oriented to the predominant wind directions and chimneys that get rid of foul smells but built in such a way predators can't enter.

Termites, especially the queen, needs to live in an environment where the temperatures are fairly uniform. Mounds are laced with tunnels that control temperature, humidity and oxygen content as well as providing transportation routes. In hot weather, workers descend down tunnels to the water table to collect water which they apply to the walls. As the walls heat up water evaporates and creates a cooling effect. Gases are forced out of the chimneys when heat outside the mound forces the gases to expand.

Types of Termite Mounds

Mounds in hot, dry areas termites produce thin, chisel-shaped mounds that are exposed to a minimum of heat from the midday sun. In rainy areas they construct slightly mushroom- or umbrella-shaped mounds with circular towers and conical roofs. Some towers have several rain-shedding roofs and look like pagodas.

Bellicose termites eat from fungus gardens and live in massive mounds that house the gardens and dispose of the heat produced by the millions of termite bodies and the fungus. In one area of Nigeria you can find mounds comprised of a central spire surrounded by cluster of minarets and towers that if built to human scale would be a mile high.

Describing complex mounds in Nigeria, David Attenborough wrote: "The main part of the nest lies below ground level beneath the towers. Six feet down, there is a huge circular cellar, ten to twelve feet across and two or so feet high, quite big enough for a man to crawl into. Its hummocked floor is studded with shafts that descend a further twelve feet or more to reach the water table...In the center of the floor stands a massive clay pillar. This supports a thick earthen plate which forms the ceiling of the cellar and carries above it the central core of the nest with its tiers for nurseries, fungus gardens, food stores and, of course, the royals chambers where the king and queen live."

Below the royal chambers on the ceiling of the a chamber with fungus gardens is complex and spectacular cooling system comprised of a spiral with latticelike rings of dry salt-encrusted mud. These absorb moisture from the nest. When this moisture evaporates it creates cooling effect that makes the chamber the coolest place in the colony. Heat from the garden rises and reaches passageways at the top of the nest with flues that redirect the air down. The flues are made of porous mater that absorbs oxygen and expels carbons and brings back air that keep the fungus garden at a constant temperature of 30̊ to 31̊C

Animals That Feed on Termites

Termites are fed on by aardvarks, aardwolves, anteaters, sloth bears, armadillo, pangolins, mongooses, jackals, bat-eared foxes, some monkeys, some squirrels, some people, some elephant shrews and other creatures.

An aardvark or an anteater can rip into termite mound in a matter of minutes are cause terrible damage. In nearly all cases the damage can be repaired in less than 24 hours and the colony continues to prosper. Some termites wage a defensive war against intruders of their mounds and repair damaged structures after the attack is over. Others resign to the fate they will lose the attack an seal of the section of the mound that have been attacked.

Alates (winged males and female termites) are particularly appetizing to animals because they are easy to catch and they have a lot of fat and very little chitinous armor. Hyenas, birds and foxes have been observed waiting at holes for alates to emerge and monkey have been known to go to certain trees where alates reproduce.

Often the greatest threats come from ants. The soldiers of some species of termites have a long nozzle-like appendage on their head that shoots out a sticky goo that stops ants in their tracks. Other termites have batlike mandible that can send an ant flying a considerable distance. The soldiers of another species swell up their abdomen until the explode and spray the guts all over their attackers.

Termites, the Environment and Human Food

Termites are responsible for breaking down dead trees and other plant materials into nutrients that can be absorbed by other plants in soil. Without termites plants could not absorbed nutrients like nitrogen that they need live. With plants mammals and human wouldn't be able to live.

Termites recycle nutrients and help replenish the soil in places where other creatures are not present in numbers to get the job done. "No earthworms live in the in the arid, clayey soil of Africa's savannas," says Prestwich. "Instead termites assume the vital task of enriching the soil, recycling dead wood matter, and fostering the growth of vegetation."

Termites can also be very destructive. Every year the cause billions of dollars worth of damages to wood and even concrete buildings. They are also key players in the carbon cycle and major producers of global warming gases. They produces carbon dioxide as they break down plant litter and account for significant amounts of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere.

Alates (winged termites) of Leaf-cutter ants are considered a delicacy in much of Latin America. In 1853, the naturalist A.R. Wallace wrote about an Amazon Indian tribe that kept alates in a calabash and ate them live for breakfast dipped in manioc flour. Europeans also ate them. In 1781, one European man wrote that termites are "the most delicious and delicate eating" and taste like "sugared marrow," "sugared cream." and "sweet almonds." Other say they taste like lettuce.

In Africa, flying termites are collected after they loose their wings and sold as poultry food and snacks which taste like "fried pork rind, peanuts, and potato chips rolled into one" says Prestwich. Africans sometimes pour water on termite mounds before the wets season, tricking them into leaving the mound prematurely. They also "fish" for soldiers by using the chemicals for the first caught soldiers as bait to attract others. They reported taste best fried with salt.

Architects in Zimbabwe are studying how termites regulate temperature, humidity and airflow in their mounds in order to build more comfortable buildings.

Image Sources:

Text Sources: Mostly National Geographic articles. Also “Life on Earth” by David Attenborough (Princeton University Press), New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Natural History magazine, Discover magazine, Times of London, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated March 2011


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