The desire to incorporate wood in modern construction has led a considerable increase the use of modification techniques, and especially thermal modification. However, thermally modified poor performance against termites. concept using combined chemical been undertaken through impregnation with either bicine or tricine prior This paper considers effects these chemicals on activity termites thei...

UNLABELLED Termites and their gut microbes engage in fascinating dietary mutualisms. Less is known about how these complex symbioses have evolved after first emerging in an insect ancestor over 120 million years ago. Here we examined a bacterial gene, formate dehydrogenase (fdhF), that is key to the mutualism in 8 species of "higher" termite (members of the Termitidae, the youngest and most bio...

Field observations suggested that subterranean termites might follow a concentration gradient of attractive material to find decaying wood. Laboratory cultures of the brown rot fungus, Lenzites trabea Pers. ex. Fr., on pine blocks formed a material attractive to the eastern subterranean termites, Reticulitermes flavipes (Kol.) and R. virginicus Banks, and a Costa Rican termite, Nasutitermes col...

or are they resolved? Both the ants and the termites cultivate their fungal crops in monocultures. This is remarkable, because there is ample genetic variation of fungal strains across colonies so that horizontal transmission should at least occasionally (in the ants) or regularly (in most termites) establish genetically variable fungus gardens. In the ants, monocultures are actively enforced b...

The termites evolved eusociality and complex societies before the ants, but have been studied much less. The recent publication of the first two termite genomes provides a unique comparative opportunity, particularly because the sequenced termites represent opposite ends of the social complexity spectrum. Zootermopsis nevadensis has simple colonies with totipotent workers that can develop into ...

To study the phylogenetic relationships of Indian termites (Insecta: Isoptera), mitochondrial DNA sequences of 334 bp of Cytochrome Oxidase subunit I gene of nine species were subjected to MEGA 5.2. Phylogenetic trees were constructed using Neighbor-Joining and Maximum Likelihood methods. The results revealed the phylogenetic status of Indian termites with other species from different geographi...

An infestation of termites is weakening mathematical writing. We all too often resort to wishy-washy conditionals such as ‘can be’ or ‘wish to’ hidden within the body of sentences. Just as termites weaken a building, these conditionals erode writing by turning what should be definite statements into weak conditionals. Get rid of them. If in your analysis or computational experiments you do some...

The aim of this study is to determine the effectiveness of a natural tropical tree resin in controlling termites thus providing protection from their destruction. Tree resin from the bark of tropical trees offers the potential for this protection. Termites were fed by filter paper soaked in tropical tree resin dissolved in a solvent at different concentrations for 15 days. The number of termite...

At present there is no consensus theory explaining the evolutionary stability of mutualistic interactions. However, the question is whether there are general 'rules', or whether each particular mutualism needs a unique explanation. Here, I address the ultimate evolutionary stability of the 'agricultural' mutualism between fungus-growing termites and Termitomyces fungi, and provide a proximate m...

Termites form one-piece nests in wood that can vary in their moisture content and degree of decomposition, and thus microbial richness. To estimate the microbial load of nests and the potential risk they pose for colony members, we quantified the number of microbes in the nest and on the cuticle of the dampwood termite, Zootermopsis angusticollis, and three drywood termites, Incisitermes minor,...