Wood feeder, common in forests, savannahs and arid areas.
Heterotermes has fixed nest sites in old tree roots, buried logs, or wet buried timber. These sites are often multiple and connected by carton tunnels. In some cases the holding structures are large enough to produce a single central carton nest (Harris, 1971).
In Australia do not build mounds but are found in small colonies adjacent to stumps, logs on the ground, or rotting wood or beside the mounds of other termites (Hadlington, 1987).
In rainforests of south-east Asia it is commonly found hollowing out the centre of twigs, often those too small to be attacked by other species (Eggleton et al., 1997, unpublished data).
Although a widely distributed and common termite its biology is not well known.
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