Research on the dampwood termite suggests that termites may be capable of learning, and changing their behaviour according to their environment.
Social insects have developed very complex societies. But this does not necessarily mean they are intelligent or can learn. Certainly, they have developed effective and specific communication methods (often chemical) and exhibit complex behaviours on a colony scale. But what about the individual? Bees have been studied in great detail, particularly honeybees, and have been demonstrated to exhibit associative conditioning. This is perhaps not surprising as such learning is essential to efficient foraging. Conditional learning has been demonstrated in ants too, where they can be conditioned to avoid a food they previously found attractive. But what about termites?
Despite the fact termite colonies are complex and they exhibit quite complicated behaviour, it has generally been accepted that individual termites are not ‘intelligent’ and are not able to learn. This is probably only because there has been little research on the subject. However, researchers have recently demonstrated that individual termites are capable of learning.
Using the dampwood termite, Zootermopsis angusticollis (pictured above) researchers carried out trials to see if individual termites could be negatively conditioned to change their behaviour. Using a Y-shaped maze, where termites had the choice between two chambers, termites were ‘trained’ to avoid the right-hand chamber by exposing the termites to a combination of tea tree and lemon juice (repellent odours) whenever the termite chose the right-hand chamber. After ten conditioning rounds, the number of termites avoiding the right-hand chamber in the absence of the repellents decreased significantly, thus proving the termites are indeed capable of learning.
This is just the start of a body of work required to understand the capability of termite learning. The authors mentioned the need for follow-up work to determine the length of memory for such learning events. Understanding potential neural changes associated with memory formation will also be studied. Whilst a first, significant step, the role of learning in the foraging behaviour of termites is a whole body of work that needs to be initiated.
Further reading: Ding Y.E and Li, Z (2024). Termites can learn. Behavioural Processes, 217: 105012. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2024.105012
Header image: Zootermopsis angusticollis (photo credit: Camille Stephens/iNaturalist)
