Behavior and Ecology of Foraging in Termites

Traniello, James F. A.; Leuthold, R. H.

doi:10.1007/978-94-017-3223-9_7

Cited by 155 publications

(134 citation statements)

References 96 publications

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“…In all higher termites studied so far, there is intensive egg and brood care (figure 1b), associated with true worker castes that combine the specialized task of foraging with brood care, often starting with the latter early in life and changing to the former when they become older (age polyethism [40]). In R. flavipes, the amount of stomodeal trophallaxis varied widely among individuals, which might also be indicative of division of labour among workers.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Brood care and social evolution in termites

et al. 2012

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Cooperative brood care is assumed to be the common driving factor leading to sociality. While this seems to be true for social Hymenoptera and many cooperatively breeding vertebrates, the importance of brood care for the evolution of eusociality in termites is unclear. A first step in elucidating this problem is an assessment of the ancestral condition in termites. We investigated this by determining the overall level of brood care behaviour across four termite species that cover the phylogenetic diversity of the lower termites. Brood care was low in the three species (all from different families) that had an ancestral wood-dwelling lifestyle of living in a single piece of wood that serves as food and shelter. In the fourth species, a lower termite that evolved outside foraging, brood care was more common. Together with data for higher termites, this suggests that brood care in termites only becomes important when switching from a wood-dwelling to a foraging lifestyle. These results imply that early social evolution in termites was driven by benefits of increased defence, while eusociality in Hymenoptera and cooperative breeding in birds and mammals are primarily based on brood care.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Higher termites can have colony sizes of up to a few million individuals with sophisticated division of labour (e.g. fungus-growers) [40,41] and they are the dominant extant species both in terms of species richness and biomass [15].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Brood care and social evolution in termites

et al. 2012

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“…The most fecund individuals (queens, and in termites also kings) outlive the non-reproducing workers and soldiers by one to two orders of magnitude (Keller and Genoud, 1997;Keller, 1998;Monroy Kuhn and Korb, 2016). An extreme example comes from fungus-growing Macrotermes termites in which the lifespan of queens is more than 15-20 years while the workers only live 2-3 months (Traniello and Leuthold, 2000). At the same time, these queens are the most fertile individuals amongst all animals as they lay up to 20 000 eggs per day.…”

Section: Subordinate Helping Life-history Features and Cooperative mentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of delayed dispersal and subsequent emergence of helping, with implications for cooperative breeding

Wild

Korb

2017

Journal of Theoretical Biology

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Cooperative breeding occurs when individuals help raise the offspring of others. It is widely accepted that help displayed by cooperative breeders emerged only after individuals' tendency to delay dispersal had become established. We use this idea as a basis for two inclusivefitness models: one for the evolution of delayed dispersal, and a second for the subsequent emergence of helpful behaviour exhibited by non-breeding individuals. We focus on a territorial species in a saturated environment, and allow territories to be inherited by non-breeding individuals who have delayed dispersal. Our first model predicts that increased survivorship and increased fecundity both provide an incentive to non-breeding individuals to delay dispersal, and stay near their natal territory for some period of time. Predictions from the first model can be well understood by ignoring complications arising from competition among relatives. Our second model shows that effects on relatives play a primary role in the advantage of helping. In addition, the second model predicts that increased survivorship and fecundity promote the emergence of help. Together, our models lead us to conclude that the emergence of cooperative-breeding systems is made easier by life-history features associated with high survivorship and fecundity. We discuss the implications of our conclusions for life-history-based hypotheses of cooperative breeding and social evolution.

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“…By the early 1970's approximately 1900 living and fossil species of termites had been described (Lee & Wood, 1971) and a constant flow of first descriptions is still increasing this number significantly. Termites (taxondependent) act as herbivores as well as decomposers, feeding on a wide range of living, dead or decaying plant material (Adamson, 1943;Noirot & Noirot-Timothée, 1969;Lee & Wood, 1971;Wood, 1976Wood, , 1978Bignell & Eggleton, 2000;Traniello & Leuthold, 2000), including the consumption and turnover of large volumes of soil rich in organic matter and fungi. These feeding habits make termites important ecosystem engineers, which over long periods of time can modify the physical properties of soil such as texture, water infiltration rates and nutrient content, at various spatial scales (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The importance of termites (Isoptera) for the recycling of herbivore dung in tropical ecosystems: a review

Freymann¹,

Buitenwerf²,

DeSouza³

et al. 2008

Eur. J. Entomol.

110

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Abstract. While the key role of termites in the decomposition of litter in the tropics has been acknowledged for a long time, much less information exists on their importance in the recycling of dung of primary consumers, especially herbivores. A review of published studies shows that a diverse group of termites (at least 126 species) has been reported to feed on a wide range of mammalian dung (18 species). Predominantly, wood-feeding and polyphagous wood-litter feeding species were found to feed also frequently on dung. Moreover, we found that termites can quickly remove large amounts of mammalian dung, especially in the dry season, when on average about 1/3 of the dung deposited in a given habitat is removed by termites within one month (with the highest rates observed in savannas). No distinctive preference for mammalian dung over other organic food sources was observed for fungusgrowing termites (Macrotermitinae), whereas the majority of the non-fungus growing taxa studied prefer dung over other food. As termites bring large quantities of dung below the soil surface, disturb and enrich soils with nutrients, dung feeding by termites appears to be a previously underestimated process important in the functioning of tropical ecosystems.

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Behavior and Ecology of Foraging in Termites

Cited by 155 publications

References 96 publications

Brood care and social evolution in termites

Brood care and social evolution in termites

Evolution of delayed dispersal and subsequent emergence of helping, with implications for cooperative breeding

The importance of termites (Isoptera) for the recycling of herbivore dung in tropical ecosystems: a review

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