Search for food and scout termites in Reticulitermes lucifugus (Isoptera, Rhinotermitidae)

A major principle in the study of the social organization of insect colonies is that members of the worker castepartition tasks required for colony growth and survival. In detail, to get information about the food location they relyon specialized nest mates (called ‘scouts’, ‘pioneers’, ‘searchers’) that investigate a new territory systematically searchingfor unknown food sources. The current work aimed to investigate the exploratory behaviour of the termiteReticulitermes lucifugus in presence and absence of food sources, collecting behavioural data using individual markingand scan-sampling techniques. The results of experiments performed under laboratory conditions allowed todescribe the searching patterns and to identify the existence of scout termites, who start to explore the environmentindependently by food presence, and were recognized as the largest and oldest workers. Moreover, we observed thatwhen food was found, most of the colony members started to move rapidly towards it, whereas in absence of food,almost all the individuals stayed in the nest area.