Foraging Populations and Territories of the Eastern Subterranean Termite (Isoptera: Rhinotermitidae) in Southeastern Florida

Define Colony Number of Subterranean Termites Coptotermes gestroi(Isoptera: Rhinotermitidae) in Selected Infested Structures

“…A mean weight model (Begon 1979;Su et al 1993) was used to estimate the foraging population (N) and the associated standard error (SE);…”

“…There were two types of termite monitoring stations -the above ground and the underground monitoring stations. Pre-installations of stations and pine wood billets similar to those described by Su and Scheffrahn (1988) were installed in the ground within the range of 1.5 to 3 m apart around buildings/structures. 100-300 pine stakes were used for every study site.…”

“…Each round was run for two weeks. The foraging territory of a colony was defined as the area encompassed by the stations containing termites during the triple mark recapture cycles (TMR) (Su & Scheffrahn 1988). Meanwhile, the linear foraging distance was measured from one of the active monitoring stations containing blue termites to the furthest away monitoring station that contain blue termites at a site.…”

“…(Forschler & Townsend 1996a), Globitermes sulphureus Haviland (Abdul Hafiz et al 2008;Lee et al 2003a;Ngee & Lee 2002). The triple mark recapture technique using weighted mean method (Begon 1979) was used to estimate the populations of C. formosanus (Su & Scheffrahn 1988), Reticulitermes flavipes Kollar (Forschler & Townsend 1996b;Su et al 1993), Reticulitermes speratus Kolbe (Tsunoda et al 1998), Coptotermes gestroi Wasmann (Sornnuwat et al 1996), Coptotermes curvignathus Wasmann (Abdul Hafiz & Abu Hassan 2006;Sajap 1999) and Microtermes pakistanicus Ahmad (Lee et al 2003b). In this study, triple mark recapture technique was used because it increases the ratio of recaptured termites in the population as compared to single mark recapture with Lincoln Index on (Begon 1979).…”

Threat of Subterranean Termites Attack in the Asian Countries and their Control: A Review

“…Primary reproductives choose the initial nesting site at the culmination of the nuptial flight. The foraging area for the colony is established based on the nest location, although the search for food may extend out many meters from that center with made exploratory tunnels (Su et al, 1993).…”