Meeting Abstract
Termites of the species Odontotermes obesus are found widely in India and their presence is visible due to the large over-ground mounds that they build across the landscape. These mounds house the entire colony, which includes the queen, worker and soldier termites, and the brood. In addition, the termites also farm a specific variety of fungus which is commensal with the termites, and may help them break down the cellulose-rich food. The precise function of the mound architecture is the subject of some debate, and it has been argued that its structure serves physiological functions such as thermoregulation for the entire colony, or gas exchange. If the mound structure indeed serves an important function, then we hypothesized that termites must have the ability to sense and repair any breaches in their mound architecture. A small breach in the mound wall is quickly detected by the worker class and repaired. This behavior is consistent and provides us with an assay to investigate various phenomena pertaining to mound building, investigate the sensory cues involved, and measure the response to external environmental factors and soil conditions. Here, we describe a method of measuring this behavior, and develop various assays that exploit this behavior to gain insights into the sensory cues used by termites. We also present a mathematical model for the mound repair behavior, and show that although worker termites do not possess well-defined eyes, they are capable of sensing luminosity via some light-mediated extra-ocular mechanism.
