Casting termite tunnels to understand how termites approach and establish foraging in resources

Tuesday, November 12, 2024

8:00 AM – 8:12 AM MST

Location: Phoenix Convention Center, 225 B, PCC

Presenting Author(s)

Mark Janowiecki, BCE

Research Entomologist
City of New Orleans Mosquito, Termite, and Rodent Control Board
New Orleans, Louisiana

Co-Author(s)

CC

Carrie Cottone

City of New Orleans Mosquito, Termite, and Rodent Control Board
New Orleans, Louisiana
PB

Paul Bardunias

University of Florida
Hollywood, Florida
EG

Eric Guidry

City of New Orleans Mosquito, Termite, and Rodent Control Board
New Orleans, Louisiana
SB

Shaun Broadley

City of New Orleans Mosquito, Termite, and Rodent Control Board
New Orleans, Louisiana
FS

Francesco Scattorin

City of New Orleans Mosquito, Termite, and Rodent Control Board
New Orleans, Louisiana
GH

Glen Higgins

City of New Orleans Mosquito, Termite, and Rodent Control Board
New Orleans, Louisiana
CR

Claudia Riegel

City of New Orleans Mosquito, Termite, and Rodent Control Board
New Orleans, Louisiana

Understanding termite foraging in a natural setting is limited due to their cryptic nature, tunneling undetected through soil to discover cellulose food resources. Previous research has been conducted in the laboratory but is limited to two-dimensional planar arenas. While these are much more realistic than experiments conducted in an open petri dish, they lack the understanding of tunneling behavior in three-dimensional space. For this study, we created termite bait stations out of steel and placed them in an area with known termite activity. After the establishment of foraging on the wood inside the station, we removed the wood and poured in molten zinc to fill in the tunnels the termites created. We had good movement of the zinc, up to around 45 cm horizontally from the station. We observed some stations were connected by large, tunnels that were oval shaped and about one cm wide. We saw many smaller exploratory tunnels branching off the major tunnels. Most bait stations had a large tunnel going straight down from the base of the station. These field observations of termite tunneling are important to advance our understanding of how termites search for and utilize resources. Additionally, this is important in designing future bait station specifications.