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10-Minute Presentation

Systematics, Evolution, and Biodiversity

10-min: SysEB, Behavior - Social Insects

Fossil and living termites reveal the evolution of termite tandem running

Sunday, November 10, 2024
9:24 AM – 9:36 AM MST
Location: Phoenix Convention Center, 222 B, PCC
Oral Presentation
Amber provides one of the most detailed and vivid records of extinct life. In this study, we report a 38-million-year-old piece of Baltic amber containing a pair of extinct termite species Electrotermes affinis. Our 3D X-ray micro-CT scanning revealed that the fossilized pair was composed of a female and a male, suggesting that they were in tandem courtship behavior of extant termites. We demonstrated that the pair was in tandem run by simulating the first stage of amber formation, the immobilization of captured organisms. We exposed tandem running pairs of the modern termites, Coptotermes formosanus, to sticky surfaces. Using automated video tracking of animal posture, we estimated that the pair was in a tandem run and the leader of the fossilized tandem run was male with a probability of 74%. This interpretation is supported by the ancestral state reconstruction of tandem running behavior in termites, which supported that tandem running behavior was present in the common ancestor of modern termites and has been preserved across most lineages. Therefore, the tandem running behavior of E. affinis is the oldest termite record of a movement coordination behavior still present across extant relatives.