{"id":6653,"date":"2015-01-01T21:12:17","date_gmt":"2015-01-01T10:12:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ppmmagazine.com.au\/?p=6653"},"modified":"2023-11-22T21:10:51","modified_gmt":"2023-11-22T10:10:51","slug":"how-termites-hear-about-trouble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/termite-research\/how-termites-hear-about-trouble\/","title":{"rendered":"HOW TERMITES ‘HEAR’ ABOUT TROUBLE"},"content":{"rendered":"

The findings of a German study support the theory that termites use vibrations to communicate danger to their nestmates.\u00a0<\/em>
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Stephen Ornes<\/strong> writing on the Society for Science website<\/a> reports that when it comes to sensing danger, termites use their heads \u2014 and legs. The insects can tell which direction to run using a precise biological timer, scientists report in a new study.<\/p>\n

A common African termite builds mounds that stand a meter or more tall. Known as Macrotermes natalensis,<\/em> these insects also inhabit underground tunnels that stretch over an area as big as a large home. And when a predator comes knocking \u2014 like a termite-eating aardvark \u2014 the insects sound a natural alarm system.<\/p>\n

To sound a warning, soldier termites smack their heads against the floors of their tunnels. This head banging sends vibrations down the tunnels at about 130 meters per second. As other termites pick up the signal, they\u2019ll bang their heads too, relaying the warning. In the wild, this would signal worker termites to go deep into the nest for protection as soldiers head for the source, to do battle.<\/p>\n

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In the new study, Felix Hager<\/strong> and Wolfgang Kirchner<\/strong> figured out how those soldiers use those signals to know which direction to run. Both men are biologists at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany. They published their new findings in the Journal of Experimental Biology<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Termites sense the warning vibrations with all six of their legs. They sense it first in the leg nearest the source of\u00a0the drumbeat. They feel it last in the leg farthest from the source. There\u2019s a split-second time delay between those two moments. The biologists wanted to know how short that delay could be and still correctly send a termite to do battle.<\/p>\n

They placed soldier termites on a plastic platform with a gap in the middle almost big enough to slide a coin through. Once a termite stood with its right legs on one side of the gap and its left legs on the other, the scientists triggered a vibration. It shook one side of the platform before the other. The soldiers turned or ran toward the side where they first felt the vibrations.<\/p>\n

After repeated experiments, the scientists found that\u00a0the delay from one leg to another had to last only\u00a00.2 milliseconds \u2014 a tiny fraction of the length of an eye- blink \u2014 to get a termite pointing in the correct direction. This suggested that the delay was comparable to what a termite in the wild would feel from a vibration in the tunnel.<\/p>\n

Biologist Peggy<\/strong> S.M. Hill<\/strong> at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma didn\u2019t work on this study. She has, however, studied insect vibrations for a long time. Decades ago, she says, science textbooks told students that solid materials like the ground wouldn\u2019t transmit messages clearly by way of vibrations. But clearly that\u2019s not true, she notes, as studies like this new one on termites show.<\/p>\n

Scientists now estimate that 150,000 different species communicate with vibrations in their nests or other solid surfaces. \u201cWe are just beginning to understand how they do it,\u201d Mr Hager told Science News.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The findings of a German study support the theory that termites use vibrations to communicate danger to their nestmates.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":0,"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":"The findings of a German study support the theory that termites use vibrations to communicate danger to their nestmates.\u00a0","_seopress_robots_index":"yes","_gspb_post_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[372],"tags":[],"company":[],"pest":[150],"pesticide":[],"product-service":[],"class_list":["post-6653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-termite-research","pest-termites","wpbf-post"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6653","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=6653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6653\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6653"},{"taxonomy":"company","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/company?post=6653"},{"taxonomy":"pest","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pest?post=6653"},{"taxonomy":"pesticide","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pesticide?post=6653"},{"taxonomy":"product-service","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product-service?post=6653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}