Roused, masses of termites fill their mouths with dirt and head toward the source of the problem. The commotion attracts more termites with more dirt, and within an hour or so the hole is patched.
The only way to get a glimpse of the termite super-organism in action is to rip the side off a mound. And so one morning Turner, along with entomologist Eugene Marais of the National Museum of Namibia, takes a backhoe to the test fields. With a single swoop, the backhoe removes the top of a mound and then precisely dismantles the rest, like pulling the walls off a dollhouse. The termites are not happy that their walls have suddenly disappeared, and they swarm frantically around the exposed structure.
Marais dislodges a chunk of dense soil about the size of a squashed soccer ball—the queen's chamber. After repeated blows of a hand pick, the capsule breaks open suddenly, revealing a saucer about five inches almost 13 centimeters across containing the queen.
Her sweating body is swollen to the size of a human finger. A coterie of workers carries the eggs she produces—at the staggering rate of one every three seconds—to nearby nurseries, while others feed and clean her. The queen herself, once a relatively normal size, retains her original legs, but they are now nearly useless. Her pale body pulsates, the caramel-colored fats and liquids inside swirling under her skin. The title "queen" leads people to imagine that she is in charge of the mound, but this is a misconception.
She is a captive ovary, producing hundreds of millions of eggs over her life span of up to 15 years to populate the mound. Below the queen's chamber lies the super-organism's largest organ: the fungus garden. In a symbiotic relationship dating back millions of years, the termites exit the mound through long foraging tunnels and return with their "intestines full of chewed grass and wood, which they defecate upon their return, and other workers assemble these 'pseudo-feces' into several mazelike fungus combs," Turner explains.
The termites then seed the comb with spores of fungus, which sprout and dissolve the tough cellulose into a high-energy mixture of partially digested wood and grass. For the termites, the fungus functions as a sort of external stomach, but the fungus gets the better deal. Ensconced in elaborate termite-built combs and constantly tended, the fungus receives multiple benefits, including food, water, shelter, and protection.
In fact, the deal is so lopsided that it calls into question just who's in charge of the relationship. Collectively, the colony's fungus accounts for nearly 85 percent of the total metabolism inside the mound, and Turner speculates that the fungus may send chemical signals to the termites that influence—control?
Which brings us to the most extraordinary organ: the mound itself. Contrary to common notions, termite mounds are not high-rise residence halls. Rather, they are "accessory organs of gas exchange," in Turner's words, designed to serve the respiratory needs of the subterranean colony located several feet a meter or two below the mound.
For many years, researchers looked at termite mounds and supposed that the spires worked like chimneys, drawing hot air up and out. But Turner discovered that mounds function more like lungs, inhaling and exhaling through walls that appear impenetrable but are actually quite porous. Inside the mound, a series of bubble-like chambers connected to branching passages absorb changes in outside pressure or wind and pass them through the mound. But it is still made from sand and clay with a porous structure, and hence water will affect it with time.
Regular Pest control will surely force them out. Hiniesta Tagliapietra Pundit. How do you get rid of termite mounds? If it has been repaired it is because termites are definitely in there. Killing the colony inside is then a simple matter of reopening the hole and pouring 20 to 30 litres of a chlorpyrifos or a bifenthrin solution into the trunk.
Use a crowbar or a pick to break open the top and sides of a mound. Placer Garlich Pundit. Do termites make dirt mounds? In some places, termites build mounds where the soil is unusually dry; the structures are so perfect, they have wells and ways to move water around the structure. Mounds can be underground, mistaken for an ant hill. Termite mounds such as this are found in deserts in Tanzania and other countries.
Boutahar Rajasimha Teacher. How termites work together? Lots of factors combine to allow termites to do all this. First, like many types of bees, termites are social. They cooperate to find food, raise young and build and defend nests.
They take tiny bites of wood to use as food, and they carry tiny particles of dirt and waste to build their homes. Chanda Marklein Supporter. Are termites blind? Unlike many pests, termites rely on other senses more than eyesight to interact with the world around them. While termite kings, queens, and reproductives have small, weak eyes, workers and soldiers are entirely blind. Sumiko Batuca Supporter. How big is a termite? The queens and kings are larger, capable of reaching over one inch long.
Colors range from white to light brown where worker termites often appear lighter, while swarming termites darker. Georgianne Schaffenicht Supporter. The mound is constructed out of a mixture of soil, termite saliva and dung. Although the mound appears solid, the structure is incredibly porous.
Its walls are filled with tiny holes that allow outside air to enter and permeate the entire structure. The top of the mound consists of a central chimney surrounded by an intricate network of tunnels and passages. Air travels through the porous walls into a series of small tunnels until it reaches the central chimney and rises up.
When fresh air mixes with this warm air, the air cools and sinks down into the nest. If, for instance, one section of the mound is too warm, that temperature change will trigger a change in air flow, which will carry construction cues to nearby workers.
The termites will follow their senses to that section and adjust the mound to reduce temperature. That change in temperature will change the air flow and the termites will change their behavior. Termite mounds function as a ventilation system. A temperature change will cause internal flows in the mound, which move pheromone-like cues around, triggering building behavior in individual termites. Pictured is a termite mound near Hargeisa, Somaliland, in Northeast Africa.
By quantifying this feedback loop, the model developed by the Mahadevan group presents a minimal description that captures the essential features of mound morphogenesis and generates a wide range of typical mound morphologies. Depending on the physical and behavioral parameters at play, the mounds of different termite species can look remarkably different.
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