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.
RELATED ARTICLES:
ANTS: PHERMONES, QUEENS, COMMUNICATION, HUNTING AND ENSLAVEMENT factsanddetails.com ;
ANTS THAT MAKE MILK, EXPLODE AND FORM ARMIES factsanddetails.com ;
INSECTS: CHARACTERISTICS, DIVERSITY, USEFULNESS, THREATENED STATUS factsanddetails.com
Websites and Resources on Termites: Termite article tolweb.org/Isoptera Another termite article ento.csiro.au/education/insects/isoptera ; Websites and Resources on Insects and Bugs: BugGuide bugguide.net ; Amateur Entomologists' Society amentsoc.org ; MDPI Insects mdpi.com/journal/insects; National Geographic on Bugs National Geographic ; Smithsonian bug info si.edu/Encyclopedia_SI/nmnh/buginfo ; Insect Images.org insectimages.org ; Obervations, the Naturalist inaturalist.org/observations ; Safrinet Manual for Entomology and Arachnology SPC web.archive.org
Websites and Resources on Animals: Animal Diversity Web animaldiversity.org ; BBC Earth bbcearth.com; A-Z-Animals.com a-z-animals.com; Live Science Animals livescience.com; Animal Info animalinfo.org ; Encyclopedia of Life eol.org , a project to create an online reference source for every species; World Wildlife Fund (WWF) worldwildlife.org the world’s largest independent conservation body; National Geographic National Geographic ; ; Endangered Animals (IUCN Red List of Threatened Species) iucnredlist.org ; 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.
Termites are famous for damaging buildings. After discovering that termites had eaten their way into a number of government buildings, authorities said the insects were particularly fond of buildings built in the 1970s.
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
Oldest Inhabited Termite Mounds — Active for 34,000 Years
In a paper published in May 2024, scientists in South Africa announced they were stunned to discover that termite mounds that are still inhabited in an arid region of the country are more than 30,000 years old, making them the oldest known active termite hills. Associated Press reported: Some of the mounds near the Buffels River in Namaqualand were estimated by radiocarbon dating to be 34,000 years old, according to the researchers from Stellenbosch University. “We knew they were old, but not that old,” said Michele Francis, senior lecturer in the university's department of soil science who led the study. [Source: Gerald Imray, Associated Press, July 4, 2024]
Francis said the mounds existed while saber-toothed cats and woolly mammoths roamed other parts of the Earth and large swathes of Europe and Asia were covered in ice. They predate some of the earliest cave paintings in Europe. Some fossilized termite mounds have been discovered dating back millions of years. The oldest inhabited mounds before this study were found in Brazil and are around 4,000 years old. They are visible from space. Francis said the Namaqualand mounds are a termite version of an “apartment complex” and the evidence shows they have been consistently inhabited by termite colonies.
Termite mounds are a famous feature of the Namaqualand landscape, but no one suspected their age until samples of them were taken to experts in Hungary for radiocarbon dating. “People don’t know that these are special, ancient landscapes that are preserved there,” Francis said. Some of the biggest mounds — known locally as “heuweltjies,” which means little hills in the Afrikaans language — measure around 100 feet (30 meters) across. The termite nests are as deep as 10 feet underground. Researchers needed to carefully excavate parts of the mounds to take samples, and the termites went into “emergency mode” and started filling in the holes, Francis said. The team fully reconstructed the mounds to keep the termites safe from predators like aardvarks.
Francis said the project was more than just a fascinating look at ancient structures. It also offered a peek into a prehistoric climate that showed Namaqualand was a much wetter place when the mounds were formed. The southern harvester termites are experts at capturing and storing carbon by collecting twigs and other dead wood and putting it back deep into the soil. That has benefits in offsetting climate change by reducing the amount of carbon emitted into the atmosphere. It's also good for the soil. Masses of wildflowers bloom on top of the termite mounds in a region that receives little rain.
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: Wikimedia Commons
Text Sources: Mostly National Geographic articles. Also David Attenborough books (Princeton University Press), New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Natural History magazine, Discover magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, and various books and other publications.
Last updated November 2024