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A truly peculiar snapper - Cavitermes tuberosus

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#1 Offline ItalianTermiteMan2.0 - Posted January 11 2024 - 10:17 AM

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Hello forum, it's termite-time again! This time i want to share with you a few pics by Dr. Rudolf Scheffrahn of an alcohol-preserved soldier of Cavitermes tuberosus, an interesting soil-feeding termite from the Amazon region.

 

Soldiers of this species (and congeners) sports a bizarrely-shaped head topped by a massive three-horned "crest" that contain part of the frontal gland and likely also aid in defence from the front. Their mai method of offence is the symmetrical snapping technique, where the long baton-shaped mandibles are pressed against each other, lock up, deform and store large amounts of energy until a critical point is reached, at which point they violently cross over each other delivering a powerful frontal blow. Beside these physical strikes, they also produce a defensive secretion from the aforementioned frontal gland.

 

Another peculiarity of this species is the employment of the asexual queen succession (AQS) strategy, where the primary queen can produce large number of secondary ones (up to several hundreds) to replace her, mate with the primary king and thus increase colony reproductive potential; these secondary (neotenic) queens are produced through parthenogenesis (asexually), unlike all other colony members who are produced sexually. Quite the interesting stuff!

 

And now for the photos:

 

 

Cavitermes tuberosus 1.png

Dorsal wiew of a C. tuberosus soldier's head. Note the peculiar shape of the former, the large three-horned crest (in truth best seen in the next pic)) and the elongated, baton shaped mandibles designed to snap at foes.

 

 

Cavitermes tuberosus 2.png

Lateral wiew. Here you can see best the weird crest of this genus.

 

 

Cavitermes tuberosus 3.png

Ventral wiew.

 

 

 


  • Nare, ANTdrew, bmb1bee and 1 other like this

#2 Offline ANTS_KL - Posted January 13 2024 - 6:38 PM

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Their defense mechanism quite resembles that of Pericapritermes and friends in Southeast Asia.
Young ant keeper with a decent amount of knowledge on local ant species.

YouTube: https://m.youtube.co...uKsahGliSH7EqOQ (It's pretty dead. Might upload again soon, don't expect my voice to sound the same though.)

Currently kept ant species, favorites have a star in front of their names (NOT in alphabetical order, also may be outdated sometimes): Camponotus irritans inferior, Ooceraea biroi, Pheidole parva, Nylanderia sp., Paraparatrechina tapinomoides, Platythyrea sp., Anochetus sp., Colobopsis sp. (cylindrica group), Crematogaster ferrarii, Polyrhachis (Myrma) cf. pruinosa, Polyrhachis (Cyrtomyrma) laevissima, Tapinoma sp. (formerly Zatapinoma)

Death count: Probably over a hundred individual queens and colonies by now. I cannot recall whatsoever.

#3 Offline ItalianTermiteMan2.0 - Posted January 14 2024 - 6:43 AM

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Their defense mechanism quite resembles that of Pericapritermes and friends in Southeast Asia.

 

They both snap, but Pericapritermes and similar genera employ the asymmetrical snapping technique, which works differently than the symmetrical snapping of these. In Asia there are several symmetrical snappers aswell, Termes most notably.


Edited by ItalianTermiteMan2.0, January 14 2024 - 6:44 AM.






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