One major advantage of sexual reproduction over asexual reproduction is its promotion of genetic variation, although it reduces the genetic contribution to offspring. Queens of social insects double their contribution to the gene pool, while overuse of asexual reproduction may reduce the ability of the colony to adapt to environmental stress because of the loss of genetic diversity. Recent stud...

Termite colonies are founded by a pair of primary reproductives. In many species, including subterranean termites (family Rhinotermitidae), the primary king and queen can be succeeded by neotenic reproductives that are produced from workers or nymphs within the colony. It is generally believed that these neotenics inbreed within the colony, sometimes for many generations. Here, we show that pri...

Reticulitermes, Heterotermes and Coptotermes form a small termite clade with partly overlapping distributions. Although native species occur across all continents, the factors influencing their distribution are poorly known. Here, we reconstructed the historical biogeography of these termites using mitochondrial genomes of species collected on six continents. Our analyses showed that Reticulite...

Invasive species cause severe environmental and economic problems. The invasive success of social insects often appears to be related to their ability to adjust their social organization to new environments. To gain a better understanding of the biology of invasive termites, this study investigated the social organization of the subterranean termite, Reticulitermes urbis, analyzing the breeding...

The diurnal ßights of Reticulitermes spp. have been reported to occur in the spring and early fall in northern California. From the spring of 1994 until the fall of 2001, we collected hundreds of alates of Reticulitermes spp. cuticular hydrocarbon phenotypes CA-A/A and CA-D during ßights from multiple locations in the San Francisco Bay Area. As predicted, there were two ßight seasons: one in th...

Undertaking behaviour is an essential activity in social insects. Corpses are often recognized by a postmortem change in a chemical signature. Reticulitermes flavipes responded to corpses within minutes of death. This undertaking behaviour did not change with longer postmortem time (24 h); however, R. flavipes exhibited distinctively different behaviours toward dead termites from various origin...

Crowding of termites may influence observed recipient mortality in donor-recipient toxicant transfer studies. It was hypothesized that if crowding were important , any termiticide (particularly repellent termiticides, which were not thought to transfer) could be transferred by contact among termites when the donor complement was sufficient. Termiticide transfer donorrecipient studies were perfo...

Social insects provide some of the most striking examples of sexual division. Thirty termite inspection ports were sampled four times in 11 months (September 2008 – July 2009). A total of 90 collections of a not-yet described Reticulitermes spp. were examined to estimate sex ratios. The range of sex ratios (male to female) observed, by caste, were: 0.49-3.50 for workers, 0.75-5.25 for soldiers ...

We measured rates of respiratory and cutaneous evaporative water loss as a function of air temperature in a small desert bird, the verdin Auriparus flaviceps. Birds were placed in a two-compartment metabolic chamber that separately collected water evaporated from the bird's head and body. Cutaneous and respiratory evaporative water loss, as well as CO2 production, were measured in resting birds...