Contrary to the common perception that termites are indiscriminant eaters, termites choose their food carefully; however, the methods by which they choose food are not well understood. Using choice experiments and recordings of termites feeding on wooden blocks of different sizes, we show that worker drywood termites (Cryptotermes domesticus) use the resonant frequency of a block of wood to assess its size. Drywood termites showed differences in their response to vibration recordings of termites compared with artificially generated signals, suggesting that they can discriminate the source of vibration. Furthermore, fewer workers matured into neotenic reproductives when recorded termite signals were played, suggesting that vibration signals play an important role in termite communication.foraging ͉ vibroacoustic ͉ communication ͉ social insects

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A method for range localization with a single sensor in an ocean waveguide is derived. Range localization typically requires an accurate environmental acoustics model used for processing acoustic data on a multi-element array. Recently, an alternative method for estimating range has emerged based on the waveguide invariant which still requires either an array of sufficient horizontal extent or data from a moving source for which range rate is known. In analogy to the waveguide invariant derivation, it is shown that the magnitude of the square of the difference between the acoustic field at two different ranges contains information about the range interval, Δr. Since the range interval is manifest in the time interval, Δt between field measurements, range rate can be ascertained. Experimental results confirm this single sensor localization method.