Gut Content and Laboratory Survival of the Termite Cornitermes cumulans (Isoptera: Termitidae: Syntermitinae) with Diffe
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ECOLOGY, BEHAVIOR AND BIONOMICS
Gut Content and Laboratory Survival of the Termite Cornitermes cumulans (Isoptera: Termitidae: Syntermitinae) with Different Diets Including Nest Stored Food V JANEI1, I HAIFIG2, GC SCHÖNHAUS1, AM COSTA-LEONARDO1 1
Lab de Cupins, Depto de Biologia, Instituto de Biociências, Univ Estadual Paulista, UNESP, Rio Claro, SP, Brasil Center for Natural and Human Sciences, Federal Univ of ABC, UFABC, São Bernardo do Campo, Brasil
2
Keywords Crop content, feeding habits, feeding groups, paunch content, food storage Correspondence A.M. Costa-Leonardo, Lab de Cupins, Depto de Biologia, Instituto de Biociências, Univ Estadual Paulista, UNESP, Rio Claro, SP, Brasil; [email protected] Edited by Fábio S Nascimento – FFCLRP/USP Received 11 March 2020 and accepted 9 June 2020 * Sociedade Entomológica do Brasil 2020
Abstract Cornitermes cumulans (Kollar, 1832) is a mound-building termite that stores food nodules in the nest, which seems to be pre-chewed and regurgitated by workers. Information on the food resources used by this species is still scarce, and this study aimed to understand the feeding habits of C. cumulans using a qualitative analysis of the worker gut contents, and to select the best food to keep termites under laboratorial conditions. Thus, four food resources and five artificial diets were tested to evaluate the laboratory survival of C. cumulans. Food nodules from nests were used as a positive control, and no food was available in cages for negative control. Ten replicates using 30 workers plus three soldiers were performed for each type of food and for each control. The experiments were daily examined for termite survival during a 40-day period. Data were analyzed using the log-rank (Mantel-cox) test (P < 0.05). The qualitative analysis of the gut contents showed different materials, such as plant parts, fungi, and minerals. Data analysis showed that all of the survival curves of termites fed with artificial diets and food items were significantly different from that obtained with termites fed on food nodules, which showed the highest survival, followed by the diets of α-cellulose, corn stalk, and sugarcane bagasse. Then, our findings showed that the most adequate artificial foods to maintain populations of C. cumulans in the laboratory were the diets of α-cellulose, corn stalk, and sugarcane bagasse.
Introduction Termites are important decomposers in tropical ecosystems and have a special ability to digest lignocellulosic materials (Lee & Wood 1971, Bignell & Eggleton 2000, Brune 2014). These insects may feed on wood in various stages of decaying, grasses, litter, fungi, lichens, and humus (Sleaford et al 1996, Lima & Costa-Leonardo 2007). They are organized in complex social systems structured with reproductives (king, queen, and nymphs), workers, and soldiers, which are morphologically and behaviorally caste-specific adapted (Eggleton 2011).
Differences in the nutritional physiology within castes are known for some species of termites and may be verified by the fr
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