Species group · Insects
WAnimals has 2 species of termite, spread across 2 families (Rhinotermitidae, Termitidae).
Ranges calculated from the profiles that record the figure, not from all 2.
Each one has its own full profile. This group does not replace them: it brings them together.
No species documented in this group is genuinely at risk according to the IUCN, with the data available today.
Recorded in 52 countries. The ones with the most species in the group:
The workers are blind and soft-bodied: they cannot bear light or dry air, so they build mud tubes to cross exposed surfaces, and those tubes are the first sign of an infestation.
It digests cellulose thanks to symbiotic protists housed in its gut, which it passes from one individual to another by exchanging fluids.
A colony can keep several secondary kings and queens, which lets it survive even if the founding pair is removed.
The mound works like a lung: its ducts and central chimney move air by differences in temperature with no active mechanism at all, holding the interior at a steady thirty degrees or so despite the swings outside.
That principle inspired the Eastgate Centre in Harare, Zimbabwe, which is climate-controlled by passive ventilation and uses a fraction of the energy of a conventional building.
The queen, distended by the growth of her ovaries, can measure about eleven centimetres and lay tens of thousands of eggs a day for years.