Microhodotermes

Most information is known concerning M. viator (i.e. reviewed in Coaton & Sheasby, 1974), which is found mainly in scrubby vegetation types. Found in regions with rainfall 125 mm - 750 mm, and at latitudes from coastal plain to 1,675 m. The Microhodotermes of the Palaearctic are poorly known biologically.

As with other hodotermitids the timing of foraging is dependent on surface temperatures.

Workers forage out of exit holes, which are sealed with soil particles after use. They cut twigs, sticks, bark, leaves, grass and dung into lengths of fragments. Seem to forage for more woody material than Hodotermes. Excess material is piled up around exit holes.

Where food resources are limited, colonies may have exit holes up to 45 m from the hive (Coaton, 1962), but where food is more abundant exit holes are restricted to a narrow belt around the colony centre.

Nests consist of a single hive, usually subterranean, connected by narrow galleries to superficial storage chambers, placed close to and connected to the exit holes, and surface waste dumps.

Wate dumps are regularly conical or multi-peaked. Simple conical dumps have a single access tube in the middle, with the walls composed of soil particles stuck together with saliva, linking with subterranean galleries below. Waste soil and vegetable material is deposited at the top of the access tube where they dry slowly and fall down to form the typical conical shape. In larger multi-entrance dumps the access tubes split near their base.

Where dumps are close together near the colony centre they may coalesce to form small mounds. In some areas, and over the course of many years, these mounds can grow to up to 120 cm high extremely hard mounds over the hive centre. In this case tunnels are made through the hard soil and waste material is deposited on to the surface of the mound. Some mounds in parts of Cape Province, South Africa, have probably been continuously occupied for 4,000 years (Moore & Picker, 1991), an order of magnitude longer than known for any other termite species.

The nest cavity is made of carton and is spherical to sub-spherical, with an internal diameter of 30-112 cm. There is no royal cell and the physogastric queen is able to move fairly freely through the hive and may even leave the nest.

Some nests are 90-120 cm deep, but this depends on the depth of soil available, with some which are built on shallow soil over rocks being at the surface. Nests may be found underneath mounds they build themselves, beneath stones on the soil surface, or under and sometimes partially within mounds of Trinervitermes and Amitermes.

In parts of South Africa there are up to ten colonies per hectare, each colony foraging up to 45 m away from the nest centre.

The alate season is very long ranging from October through to May, and this may be due to the very low and erratic rainfall not allowing an obvious flighting period.

The predators of M. viator are discussed in Coaton (1952) and Dean (1988, 1989). A major predator is the specialised ant Opthalmopone hottentota.

Dean (1988) reports attacks by the specialist termite predator, Ammoxenus daedalus, on M. viator. The spider appears to feeds only on smaller workers, detecting their suitability as prey items by touch. When a foraging column is attacked the termite colony responds by ‘swamping’ the area with larger workers, thus making it harder for the spider to find a suitably sized prey item.

Dean (1993) suggests that M. viator may adjust its foraging strategies to avoid predators by foraging unpredictably in time, space and temperature conditions.

The termitophiles of M. viator are discussed in Coaton & Sheasby (1974).

Classification: 

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