"Nature Guide Journal"

4 October 2001

Rather clumsily, they fluttered through the warm evening air.  The dark-amber-colored termites began their annual flight.

Feeble fliers, the queen and king termites drift in the wind until striking land or some other object.  The queens drop their wings then walk until they locate a suitable nest site of damp wood on the ground.  The kings follow them; one king eventually setting up house with each new queen.

After beginning the "termitarium" and mating, the queen will lay ten to 15 eggs, which she and the king will nurture until they are old enough to help support the colony.  When the first generation is mature enough to assist with the next, the queen and king spend the rest of their lives focused on egg production.  Queen termites may live twenty years or more.

Usually considered a primitive group of insects, termites have an incomplete metamorphosis:  eggs hatch directly into nymphs that look like adults.  In the colony, the nymphs assist the non-reproductive adults (workers) in building and maintaining the colony, and in caring for the reproductive adults and eggs

All termites are social, with established colonies of three basic castes: reproductives, workers, and soldiers.  Established termite colonies include additional generations of reproductives that add to the egg-laying of the founding queen and king.  While worker ants and bees are non-reproducing females, individual worker and soldier termites are either males or females.

Our most notable species, the giant dampwood termite (Zootermopsis angusticollis), is one of the largest of over 2,000 species of termites in the world, with queens nearly an inch long.  Dampwood termites are found only in Pacific Northwest and California; drywood and subterranean termites are found in other places in North America and around the world; mound-builders, not found in North America, thrive in warmer regions.

All termites are wood eaters.  However, termites cannot digest the cellulose they seek in the wood.  Tough cellulose chewed up by the termites is broken down into more usable chemicals by the protozoans living in the termites' intestinal tracts.  Though microscopic, the protozoans can make up to a third of the termite's overall body weight.

Termites also eat the cast skins and droppings of colony-mates, as well as eating dead or dying members.  Such recycling conserves the edible wood particles, spores, and other materials on and in the termite bodies, in addition to passing intestinal protozoans on to the next generation.

Termites play a key role in breaking down large masses of tree wood to material that can be used by new plants—building lumber as well as forest logs.  Bored deep into wood, termite burrows introduce air, water, and plant roots, as well as offer opportunity for larger animals to mine burrows and nesting holes.  And, certainly, the termites themselves are prized food for many animals, from centipedes to birds to bears.

The main termite swarming has passed for this year, and spider webs are well-decorated with the bodies and disjoined wings of the queens and kings that didn't make it.  And more stumps and downed logs are being processed by another generation of giant dampwood termites.

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Websites with more detailed information:

The University of California, Davis site includes a photograph; 

The study-guide page for  Hawaii's Department of Environmental Biochemistry includes a good deal of fairly technical information on a wide variety of "wood-destroying organisms.

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