After a couple of days of rain, Friday, 23rd of October, was sunny, warm and humid in Berkeley and Oakland, with puddles on pavement and insects active. Part of the activity was termite swarming, in both cities.
The swarming termites are surprisingly small and could be mistaken for swarming black ants if not their relatively narrower abdomens and longer wing to body lengths (while still swarming – once a couple has found each other, they land and shed their wings and start their own household.) Termite antennae are also different, longer than ant antennae and not bent like elbows.
I got a couple of clips of landed termites, but I those on car roof or hood seemed dead or dying. I don’t know if they were simply exhausted without finding a mate or if landing on car metal was bad for them.
Sad sight.
Unlike ants, wasps, bees and bumblebees, where males die after mating and queen continues as a single mother (to be assisted by a horde of daughters, if belonging to a social species), termites continue as a couple with termite king continuing to ensure the fertilization. Thus, finding single termites with their wings on, struggling to stand and failing indicates their failure.
Future together?
Termite colonies are more egalitarian than ant colonies in that workers consist of males and females – Hymenopteran female based colonies are a peculiarity, maybe arising from their haplodiplont reproduction, i.e., females are diploid, males develop from haploid eggs, which skews the kinship selective pressure, though actually eusociality arises from group selection more complicated than consanguinity index or we would not have termite colonies. Level of parental investment on offspring is a necessary precondition for sociality in insects.
On a more practical point of view, I was wondering if these termite swarms emerged from ‘outdoors’ termite colonies feasting on garden debris or other deadwood outside, or if people living in wooden buildings were having expensive problems?
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