Termite
From Freepedia
| Termites | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scientific classification | ||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||
| Families | ||||||||||||
|
Mastotermitidae |
A termite (also known as a white ant) is any member of the order Isoptera, a group of social insects that eat wood and other cellulose-rich vegetable matter. Most termite species are tropical or subtropical, but a few live in temperate regions. They are of great biological and economic interest.
Termites are generally grouped according to their preferred food or nesting behaviour. Thus the most commonly used general groupings are: Subterranean, Soil-feeding, Drywood, Dampwood and Grass eating. Of these, subterraneans and drywoods are primarily responsible for economic losses.
Termites have biting mouthparts and are soft-bodied, of moderate to small size. They live in dark nests and tunnels, except when the winged alates emerge to leave their parent colony. The bodies of flying individuals are dark, but termites which remain in the nest are whitish with only their heads being heavily pigmented. The temporary wings of termites are long and slender, in two pairs that are similar to each other. The veins near the anterior margin of the wing are strong and the rest are faintly marked. The wings are deciduous and are quickly shed with a simple flick when the swarming termites find a new nest site, pair up and dig in. The remnant of the wing is a distinct triangular scale.
Termites do not physically resemble ants; their "white ant" name is probably due to their similar social habits. The termite colony contains workers, soldiers, and reproductive individuals of both sexes. The workers are developed in subordinate castes in several species. The soldiers have large heads and strong jaws, and in some species are highly specialized against ant attack. Many have jaws so enlarged that they cannot feed themselves, but instead, like juveniles, are fed by workers. Some species, have soldiers with the ability to exude noxious liquid through either a horn-like nozzle (nasus) or simple hole in the head (fontanelle). In some species, the queen adds an extra set of ovaries with each moulting, resulting in a greatly distended abdomen and increased fecundity. The workers feed and groom her and carry away her eggs to nursery chambers. Termites undergo incomplete metamorphosis, with their freshly hatched young taking the form of small termites that grow without significant morphological changes.
Most termites cannot themselves digest the wood that they consume. Instead they rely primarily upon symbiotic protozoans (metamonads) and other microbes in their intestines to digest the cellulose for them, absorbing the end products for their own use. The gut protozoa in turn rely on symbiotic bacteria embedded on their surfaces to produce some of the necessary digestive enzymes. This relationship is one of the finest examples of mutualism among animals.
Because of their wood-eating habits, termites sometimes do great damage to buildings. Their habit of building tunnels wherever they go and of remaining concealed within the wood where they work often results in their presence being unknown until the timbers, riddled with tunnels until sponge-like inside, give way. Once they have entered a building they do not limit themselves just to wood, also damaging paper, cloth, carpets, and other cellulosic materials. In regions where termites are plentiful, no timber in construction should be left in contact with the ground unless it is naturally resistant to termites or poisoned with a timber treatment. Exposed timber can be made resistant to attack by addition of toxic preservatives, but the most effective defence is a termite-resistant concrete, steel or masonry foundation with appropriate barriers. Even so, termites are able to build tunnels with walls of packed earth over several feet of masonry or work through small cracks to reach wooden parts of a building. When termites have already penetrated a building, removing their means of access and destroying the colony with insecticides are usually effective means of stopping further damage. Another common method of treating termites in houses in Australia is the use of arsenic trioxide powder. This is carried back to the nest by the workers, killing the queen, and thus the nest.
In some regions, notably arid tropical savannas, termites construct extremely large and elaborate mounds to house their colonies. These termite mounds can have very distinctive forms, such as those of the compass termite which builds tall wedge-shaped mounds with the long axis oriented north-south for maximum solar heating, and are as hard as concrete. Some mounds can reach heights of 20 feet (6 m) or more. The internal structure of these mounds can be quite complex, with ventilation chimneys for active temperature control, nursery and waste-disposal chambers, and a well-defended internal fortification containing the queen(s).
 Cathedral Mounds |
 Magnetic Mounds (nearly North-South Axis) |
Ecologically, termites are important in nutrient recycling, habitat creation, soil formation and quality and, particularly the winged reproductives, as food for countless predators. Globally termites are found roughly between 50 degrees North & South, with the greatest biomass in the tropics and the greatest diversity in tropical forests and mediterranean shrublands. Termites are also considered to be a major source of atmospheric methane one of the prime greenhouse gases.
As social insects, termites live in colonies that number from several hundred to several million individuals at maturity. They are a prime example of decentralised, self-organised systems using swarm intelligence and use this cooperation to exploit food sources and environments that could not be available to any single insect, acting alone. Termite colonies have been a common feature of the biosphere since the Cretaceous.
The Queen, which can produce 36,000 eggs a day and can live extremely long, compared to other insects, and is the core of the vast termite colony. She can also produce pheremones, which act like radio signals to soldiers or workers telling them what to do. The king on the other hand is slightly bigger than average termite, and its only purpose is to mate with the queen. Workers are the blood of the colony. While workers are blind, they are the only way for the soldiers to survive (due to the fact that they can't feed themselves because of their oversized heads). Soldiers are the colony's defense; with their oversized mandibles they can ward off predators by biting them.
References
External links
- University of Nebraska page on Termites
- Termite Treatments
- Drywood Termites,Tenting
- Catalogue of the termites of the World
