Table 1 Some differences and characteristics of soil-feeding termite castes
From: Bacterial diversity from soil-feeding termite gut and their potential application
Caste systems | The role and activity of castes | Reference |
|---|---|---|
Soldier termites | The whole Isoptera clade is eusocial for the possession of a caste of soldiers. Judging from phylogeny, soldiers evolved once in a basal lineage ancestral to all living termites | Roisin and Korb 2010 |
As for soldier differentiation, some endocrine mechanisms may cause sex-specific differences in gonad development in these types of termites | Oguchi et al. 2016 | |
Taxonomic characters found in soldier caste present conspicuously reliable features for diversity investigations | Himmi et al. 2020 | |
The principle of caste differentiation of reproductive division between the reproductive individuals that monopolize reproduction (queens and kings) and their non-reproductive helpers such as workers and defense specialists known as soldiers | Thompson and Chernyshova 2020 | |
Termite soldier groups were searched more intensively and encountered more food sources simultaneously than other castes and more efficient perception of changes in food availability and redirecting to more profitable patches | do Sacramento et al. 2020 | |
Worker termites | The size of the worker termites is related to physiological factors, such as nutrition and energy expenditure, and mainly to the quantity and quality of food, although the results are contrasting | Dahlsjö et al. 2015 |
Workers fill many important roles, which include nest construction, food collection, nestmate care, and hygienic activity within the nest | ||
Workers termite has limited visual capabilities and communicates with nest mates primarily via olfactory channels to convey pheromonal and other chemical cues | Sun et al. 2019 | |
Worker termites masticate soil and water to create mud, as a subtle and complex combination of moisture and granular materials | ||
As the young workers ingest forage material and the old workers consume the mature comb, the changes in diet influence the bacterial composition of the gut | Otani et al. 2019 | |
The primary sequence and spatial expression pattern of Orco and 5-HTT in workers, which are respectively, associated with chemosensation and neurotransmission in insects | Sun et al. 2019 | |
Specifically, workers are wingless individuals lacking compound eyes with a pronotum that is trapezoidal | Shi et al. 2021 | |
Termite reproductives | Termite colonies are almost always headed by a single pair of reproductives that develop from workers generally via a single molt within the natal nest; they lack several adult traits, such as wings and compound eyes | Korb 2018 |
Termite reproductive live deep inside the nest of the central area (e.g., ‘royal chamber’ in a few species) of an enclosed and protected mound or nest (subterranean, epigeal, or arboreal) safe from predation | Tasaki et al. 2021 | |
Reproductive dominance of termites is often achieved via chemical communication through (CHCs) (other compounds can also be involved). Queen CHCs have been proposed to function as fertility signals across social insects to affect the behavior and physiology of colony members |