{"id":2568,"date":"2018-11-01T11:20:10","date_gmt":"2018-11-01T00:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ppmmagazine.com.au\/?p=2568"},"modified":"2023-11-22T21:15:48","modified_gmt":"2023-11-22T10:15:48","slug":"termites-listen-to-avoid-ants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/termite-research\/termites-listen-to-avoid-ants\/","title":{"rendered":"TERMITES &#8216;LISTEN&#8217; TO AVOID ANTS"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Research from the University of Western Australia has uncovered an interesting relationship between ants and termites.\u00a0<\/em><!--more--><\/p>\n<div class=\"hr-thick\"><\/div>\n<p>Ants and termites are often perceived as \u2018mortal enemies\u2019. We\u2019ve all heard the old wives\u2019 tale that termites won\u2019t attack a house if black ants are around. And while pest managers know this isn\u2019t true, latest research has revealed a surprising and previously unknown fact \u2013 termites avoid ants by listening out for their footsteps!<\/p>\n<p>How termites are able to detect the presence of ants and therefore avoid contact is largely unknown. Certainly, ants use chemical cues (pheromones) as a key communication tool, so it would make sense that termites would use the presence of such chemicals as a warning sign that predatory ants are in the area. However, the latest research suggests that termites can detect the presence of ants by using sound (vibrations) alone.<\/p>\n<p>A group of Australian researchers, including Dr <strong>Theo Evans<\/strong> from the University of Western Australia, investigated the relationship between <em>Coptotermes acinaciformis<\/em> and their major predator, <em>Iridomyrmex purpureus<\/em> (southern meat ant).<\/p>\n<p>Trials demonstrated that the termites could detect meat ant workers (main picture) through thin wood by listening for the vibration of their footsteps (no chemical cues).<\/p>\n<p>The researchers carried out the trials in a sound proof room, in an attempt to exclude external noises and vibrations which would affect their detection equipment.<\/p>\n<p>With an ant weighing only a few milligrams, how termites detect and recognise such vibrations, amongst other sounds, is unknown.<\/p>\n<p>A comparison of 16 termite and ant species found that ants make a noise whilst walking up to 100 times louder than termites. The researchers concluded that \u2018eavesdropping\u2019 on passive walking signals explains the predator detection and foraging behaviours in this ancient relationship.<\/p>\n<div class=\"thin\"><\/div>\n<p>Further reading: Sebastian Oberst <em>et al.<\/em>\u00a0&#8216;Cryptic termites avoid predatory ants by eavesdropping on vibrational cues from their footsteps&#8217;. Ecology Letters (2017).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Research from the University of Western Australia has uncovered an interesting relationship between ants and termites.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":3006,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"Research from the University of Western Australia has uncovered an interesting relationship between ants and termites.\u00a0","_seopress_robots_index":"yes","_gspb_post_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[372],"tags":[],"company":[],"pest":[167],"pesticide":[],"product-service":[],"class_list":["post-2568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-termite-research","pest-ants","wpbf-post"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/133"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2568"},{"taxonomy":"company","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/company?post=2568"},{"taxonomy":"pest","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pest?post=2568"},{"taxonomy":"pesticide","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pesticide?post=2568"},{"taxonomy":"product-service","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product-service?post=2568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}