Termites’ diverse morphology, behavior, and architectures

Hou-Feng Li^1*

¹Department of Entomology, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan

* Presenter:Hou-Feng Li, email:houfeng@nchu.edu.tw

Termites are social insects and most found in subtropical and tropical regions. Their colonies are composed of king, queen, worker, soldier, and many other castes. Colony size is up to several million individuals. Each caste presents distinctive morphology and performs specific behavior to maintain the function of the entire colony, or so-called superorganism. Termites can excavate extensive tunnels in wood and soil. Some species can build termite mound, arboreal nest, and even multiple connected underground chambers for growing fungus as their major food sources.
In this presentation, I am going to introduce the hypothesized functions of soldier’s head. The physical mechanisms of ultrafast mandible snapping behavior, spraying defensive liquid, baiting, and piercing are discussed. In addition to soldier caste, worker termite’s building behaviors will be introduced. Workers can use soil, feces, and saliva only to build different architectures but their cement-brick construction procedure is similar.
The overall knowledge of termite biology is still limited, and many interesting termite behaviors are waiting to be studied. 23 termite species have been found in Taiwan, and they are good materials for studying functional morphology, social interaction, and collective behaviors.

Keywords: termite, functional morphology, collective behavior