The termites' corner: introduction and first "episode" - Dentispicotermes brevicarinatus

Termites. A few love them, many hate them (or rather hate the very small minority of species that do cause to human activities i suppose), but there is no denying that the more than 3000 species (plus many still well hidden from taxonomy's prying eyes) known under this name make up for an extremely diverse and interesting Infraorder/Epifamily, capable of sporting unique and truly bizarre morphologies, adaptation and specializations, achieve feats of great relevance and evolutive finesse and representing a very important (and in the case of several habitats, from the African savannahs to the Amazon rainfores, pretty much key) part of our environement. Sadly, however, they're animals about which very little is known, both by the scientist and the layman, who often put all of these 3000 species remarkable variety under the rather inappropriate blanket concept of "house-eating pest". "The termites' corner" will hopefully be a seriers of post focused on one or more species, genera or even a noteworthy behaviours/adaptations of termites, composed by one or more pics (who when not grabbed by me will be obviously posted with either the author's direct approval or in complete accordance with the copyright licence he/she chose for them) plus info and curiosity of my writing. I hope it will be a constructive and positive adding to this SubReddit.... but don't expect a reglular posting schedule! And now onto our first starring species! ​ Dentispicotermes soldier and worker ​ In the attached pic we can observe a soldier (top) and a worker (bottom) of Dentispicotermes brevicarinatus, an interesting forest termite native to the of northern Amazon forestets, living mainly in countries like French Guyana, Suriname and unsurprisingly north Brazil. The soldier of the whole Dentispicotermes genus are peculiar for being able to perform 3 different styles of attack: firstly, they can fight with both "standard" bites in order to cut through their adversary in a slashing-type defence and by employing the simmetrical snap technique, where their two elongated mandibles are pressed one against the other to bend and store energy until a critical point is reached and when they slide on each other at high velocities and deliver a powerful lateral blow which kills though a strong blunt impact (while the vast majority of species that employ one of these two technique cannot perform the other) ; but if anything else fail they can also self-rupture their bodies to smear a sticky, toxic and air-hardening bright-yellow fluid (always well visible through their thorax and abdomen) onto incoming attackers, thus sacrificing themselves in the process in a prime example of a what is called autothysis, a type of altruistic suicide displayed by some eusocial inscets. This "exploding" behaviour (and the physcial adaptations comes with it) are far from being unique to Dentispicotermes, and are in fact found in soldiers and/or workers of several termite species, with varying chemical and physical properties of the released fluids and different degrees of complexity of the act (the workers - but not the soldiers - of a few Neocapritermes species are escpecially advanced in that regard, but that's something for another post!). Though little is known on this genus' ethology, they seemingly feed on the organic soils used by other termite species to build their mounds. In any case, kust like the vast majority of termites they are no pest and don't cause any harm to human activities, while being useful detritivores for their habitats. As is quite typical in te workers of soil-feeding species, the dirt-filled, coiled guts of the animal can be easily be seen through its thin and translucent abdominal cuticle.They're also reportedly to be quite hard to study, as soldiers self-rupture a let yellow ooze bursting everywere quite readily when they are handled or disturbed! Pic by Dr. Jan Sobotnik (T.RT. - University of Life Sciences of Prague); Petit Saut, French Guyana. submitted by /u/Termitico [link] [comments]

source https://www.reddit.com/r/Entomology/comments/mcbw1u/the_termites_corner_introduction_and_first/