Termites are at times referred to as ‘white ants’, but they are not ants and are not linked to them. They are most abundant in tropical and sub-tropical countries the place, in some cases, their ‘nests give increase to large, outstanding mounds. All termites type in depth colonies with 1 egg-laying queen and hundreds or 1000’s of staff. The staff are nymphs whose improvement to reproductive grownups is suppressed. Most of them carry out responsibilities in the nest, feeding the queen and the younger, nest developing and collecting foodstuff but some employees develop into ‘soldiers’ with massive heads and prolonged jaws. Their career is to protect the nest from thieves.
At sure periods of the calendar year, some of the employees complete their progress and turn out to be winged older people, the two male and feminine. These go away the nest in dense swarms and eventually land on the floor, get rid of their wings and mate. The feminine then lays eggs in the soil and so starts off a new colony. Macrotermes bellicosus is an African termite which can establish stunning mounds. The staff make the mounds by combining sand and clay with their saliva. Just earlier mentioned ground there is a central ‘nest’ with a community of tunnels a lot of of which link with underground passages leading to a very good supply of food stuff. In the nest, the queen does very little but make eggs. Her abdomen swells so substantially that she can not move and the employees feed her and carry away the eggs as speedy as she can lay them.
Termites feed solely on plant content, largely the cellulose in woody tissues. Some termites can digest the cellulose, in some cases with the assist of a populace of one-celled organisms in their gut, but Macrotermes provides the plant material back again to the nest and chews it to a pulp. On beds of this chewed pulp and termite faeces, fungi develop. Macrotermes feeds on the fungi or on the wood pulp which has been partly digested by the fungus.
If termites burrow into wood structures to get hold of their cellulose, they lead to destruction.