ItalianTermiteMan
Arachnosquire
- Joined
- Jul 23, 2023
- Messages
- 146
Here's a a pair of pics of Trinervitermes trinervoides soldiers guarding some access points to their mound. In the first we can see several small-headed but very agile minor soldiers and a single major soldier (bottom left and second pic), bigger in size and sporting a much bulkier head, while in the second a single major soldier stands in full alert, ready to "fire" on any intruder.
These quick and abundant soldiers possess only minuscole vestigial mandibles and fight by ejecting strands of a toxic and irritant fluid that quickly hardens in contact with air with surprising accuracy (especially considering that they're blind); this defence technique is especially effective against small arthropod aggressors like ants but can also repel most large vertebrate predators with the most notable exception of the Aardwolf (Proteles cristata), an extremely specialized fully insectivorous Hyenidae which evolved resistance to their chemical defence and for whom some Trinervitermes species (including T. trinervoides) are an important part of the diet; ardvarks eat them aswell, though much less than aardwolves. T. trinervoides is a locally abundant savannah-dweller that feeds on dry, dead grasses and open-forage for them in huge swarms during the night in order to avoid the risk of dehydratiation that working under the hot sun entails. They aslo build robust epigeal mounds.
Pic by Hamish Robertson (https://www.inaturalist.org/people/hamishrobertson) - Attribution-NonCommercial CC licence; Kamanjab, Namibia.
These quick and abundant soldiers possess only minuscole vestigial mandibles and fight by ejecting strands of a toxic and irritant fluid that quickly hardens in contact with air with surprising accuracy (especially considering that they're blind); this defence technique is especially effective against small arthropod aggressors like ants but can also repel most large vertebrate predators with the most notable exception of the Aardwolf (Proteles cristata), an extremely specialized fully insectivorous Hyenidae which evolved resistance to their chemical defence and for whom some Trinervitermes species (including T. trinervoides) are an important part of the diet; ardvarks eat them aswell, though much less than aardwolves. T. trinervoides is a locally abundant savannah-dweller that feeds on dry, dead grasses and open-forage for them in huge swarms during the night in order to avoid the risk of dehydratiation that working under the hot sun entails. They aslo build robust epigeal mounds.
Pic by Hamish Robertson (https://www.inaturalist.org/people/hamishrobertson) - Attribution-NonCommercial CC licence; Kamanjab, Namibia.
