Lee Sang-Bin, Su Nan-Yao, Song Hark-Soo, Lee Sang-Hee
Department of Entomology and Nematology Ft. Lauderdale Research and Education Center Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences University of Florida Ft. Lauderdale FL USA.
Division of Industrial Mathematics National Institute for Mathematical Sciences Daejeon Korea.
Ecol Evol. 2020 Jan 29;10(4):2145-2152. doi: 10.1002/ece3.6051. eCollection 2020 Feb.
Subterranean termite nests are located underground and termites forage out by constructing tunnels to reach food resources, and tunneling behavior is critical in order to maximize the foraging efficiency. Excavation, transportation, and deposition behavior are involved in the tunneling, and termites have to move back and forth to do this. Although there are three sequential behaviors, excavation has been the focus of most previous studies. In this study, we investigated the deposition behavior of the Formosan subterranean termite, Shiraki, in experimental arenas having different widths (2, 3, and 4 mm), and characterized the function of deposited particles. We also simulated moving distance of the termites in different functions. Our results showed that total amounts of deposited particles were significantly higher in broad (4 mm width) than narrow (2 mm) tunnels and most deposited particles were observed near the tip of the tunnel regardless of tunnel widths. In addition, we found that deposited particles followed a quadratic decrease function, and simulation results showed that moving distance of termites in this function was the shortest. The quadratic decrease function of deposited particles in both experiment and simulation suggested that short moving distance in the decrease quadratic function is a strategy to minimize moving distance during the deposition behavior.
地下白蚁巢位于地下，白蚁通过建造隧道外出觅食以获取食物资源，而挖掘行为对于最大化觅食效率至关重要。挖掘、运输和沉积行为都涉及到隧道建造，白蚁必须来回移动来完成这些行为。虽然有这三个连续的行为，但挖掘一直是大多数先前研究的重点。在本研究中，我们在具有不同宽度（2毫米、3毫米和4毫米）的实验场地中研究了台湾乳白蚁（Shiraki）的沉积行为，并对沉积颗粒的功能进行了表征。我们还模拟了白蚁在不同功能下的移动距离。我们的结果表明，宽隧道（4毫米宽）中沉积颗粒的总量显著高于窄隧道（2毫米），并且无论隧道宽度如何，大多数沉积颗粒都在隧道顶端附近被观察到。此外，我们发现沉积颗粒遵循二次递减函数，模拟结果表明白蚁在此函数下的移动距离最短。实验和模拟中沉积颗粒的二次递减函数表明，在二次递减函数中较短的移动距离是在沉积行为期间最小化移动距离的一种策略。
