Tag: Isoptera

Tasked to defend the colony from attackers, the specialised soldier caste in some termite species has evolved various impressive mechanisms, including plug-like heads – meant to block intruding ants trying to invade their lairs, and mouthparts designed to bite and pierce.

Still, there are even more spectacular soldiers, such as a recently discovered drywood termite species, whose unique long and slender, stick-like snapping mandibles produce one of the highest acceleration speeds measured in a living organism. Rather than bite, these peculiar ‘jaws’ deliver powerful strikes at enemies bold enough to stand in the way of the soldier termite and its colony.

The scientists describe the new termite’s specialty in detail:

“Roisinitermes employs a unique strategy of snapping, achieved by long and slender mandibles pressed against each other in a defensive encounter. When this potential energy is released, the left mandible springs over the right and the resultant snap is forced onto the opponent if it is in the path of the strike.”

Discovered in Cameroon, this striking species is the first drywood termite found to rely on snapping mandibles as a defense strategy. Given that until now there had been a single subfamily (Termitinae) known to have developed such, the very existence of the new insect poses a whole new set of questions before scientists. Have snapping mandibles evolved independently in two evolutionary lineages? Or, is it that these groups share a distant kin relationship which has gone unnoticed for that long?

The new drywood termite, which is also assigned to a new genus, is named Roisinitermes ebogoensis, and is described in the open access journal ZooKeys by an international team of researchers, led by Dr Rudolf Scheffrahn of the Institute for Food and Agricultural Sciences at University of Florida, Davie, USA. Although this particular species is not thought to be a pest, some drywood termites cause serious damage to wooden structures around the world.

Both colonies studied by the scientists were found near the Ebogo II village, which also stands behind the name of the species. The first unusual colony to draw the attention of the scientists was collected from a forest on an island in the Nyong River, where it lived in a thin (3 cm) and long (over 3 m) broad-leaf tree branch suspended from a canopy. The second one – in a 15-mm thick dead liana branch hanging from a tree in a nearly pristine rainforest.

The team expects that future research will shed more light on the origins and evolution of the newly discovered termite.

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Original source:

Scheffrahn RH, Bourguignon T, Akama PD, Sillam-Dussès D, Šobotník J (2018) Roisinitermes ebogoensis gen. & sp. n., an outstanding drywood termite with snapping soldiers from Cameroon (Isoptera, Kalotermitidae). ZooKeys 787: 91-105. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.787.28195

While the last species of the termite genus Proneotermes genus has been discovered more than a hundred years ago, now scientists have discovered a new and a third one. Part of the fauna living in the dry forests in Colombia, its name was inspired by the magic realism of the fictional town of “Macondo” from the novel ‘One hundred years of solitude’ by Nobel Prize laureate Gabriel García Marquez.

Termitologists Robin Casalla, Freiburg University, Germany, and Universidad del Norte, Colombia, Dr Rudolf H. Scheffrahn, University of Florida, USA, and Prof Dr Judith Korb, Freiburg University, discovered a termite species and described it as new based on its unique shapes and colors, as well as its genes. The new termite is published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

Furthermore, there is a story behind the name of this new species, called Proneotermes macondianus. “Macondianus” refers to the fictional town of “Macondo” in the novel ‘One hundred year of solitude’ written by Nobel Prize laureate Gabriel García Marquez. Macondo stands for a forgotten microcosm in the history of Colombia with unimaginable events. According to the story, the magical realm was eventually wiped off the map by gigantic storms of the Caribbean as a form of divine punishment to the violation of the biblical laws of genetics, incest.

“P. macondianus may have been one of those characters playing in the novel during the destruction of Macondo, remaining unrecognized until today,” comments lead author Robin Casalla.

In Colombia many species still await their discovery, either in the wild, or frozen in time in museum cabinets and lacking a name. The only way to refer to them, is by pointing to them with your finger. But now, P. macondianus has been described in ZooKeys.

The soldiers of this species have a characteristic elongated, rectangular heads, about 5 – 7 mm long, ranging in color from black (at the tip) to ferruginous orange (at the back). P. macondianus has a voracious appetite for drywood, especially thin branches of less than 2 cm in diameter, and lives in small colonies of about 20 individuals. Although few drywood termites are considered pests in some urban areas, P. macondianus lives only in the wild and prefers tropical dry forests.

The termite P. macondianus ‘sentenced’ to over a hundred years of ‘solitude’, has now been given a second chance to not be forgotten again, being recognized as part of the Colombian natural ecosystem.

Original source:

Casalla R, Scheffrahn RH, Korb J (2016) Proneotermes macondianus, a new drywood termite from Colombia and expanded distribution of Proneotermes in the Neotropics (Isoptera, Kalotermitidae). ZooKeys 623: 43-60. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.623.9677