For most, termites are an inconvenient pest occasionally invading homes, but for a group of University researchers, the insect is a swarm of scientific discovery.
Postdoctoral researcher Cai Wang, along with entomology professor Gregg Henderson, research associate Bal K. Gautam, entomology Ph.D student Jie Chen and graduate student Dependra Bhatta, studied termites’ reaction to disturbances, finding their ability to work in groups as a possible indicator for the species’ long term survival. Henderson refers to this phenomenon as “panic escape.”
“Termites seem to be more uniform about how they run, how they pace themselves, climb over on top of each other, and this behavior is instinctive,” Henderson said. “They don’t think about it. They don’t panic and ask, ‘Where am I going to go now?’ Someone makes a decision and they all just start following that individual in an instinctive way.”
To conduct this research, the team placed hundreds of termites into Petri dishes, marking a number of them. Once the termites were acclimated the team created a disturbance by slightly tapping the dish, or dropping it from a somewhat higher distance than normal.
The team found the disturbance caused different reactions in both types of termites.
Worker termites would walk uniformly around to petri dish edges, while soldier termites would go against the grain snapping their mandibles.
Henderson said this comes on instinct because soldier termites don’t think about protecting their fellow insects.
“Sometimes it’s easier to explain things in human terms, but insects don’t think like humans,” Henderson said. “You’re really doing a disservice when you give human terms in trying to help explain something to an audience because you’re misleading them by giving them that type of terminology sometimes.”
The team’s research caught worldwide attention when their research paper claimed termites were the first animals to create societies, a fact Henderson chose to include from his expertise on the insect.
“Through my education and through knowing insects and the phylogeny of animals I knew that termites evolved 200 million years ago,” Henderson said. “It was actually after I made this statement that I was contacted by people and friends telling me that I had to reinvestigate my statement with some worry, but as it turns out I’m still as accurate as anybody, no one can claim I’m wrong at least. The statement was put in to draw attention to the paper as a fact and it still remains a fact.”
Termites’ social behavior may give key insight to help humans in social situations.
Henderson said the study could help humans develop better emergency evacuation routes, noting that in moments of crisis people tend to panic leading to fatal accidents.
When presenting his findings to the Louisiana pest control industry, Henderson said this research has limited applications for the work entomologists at the University focus on — studying insects to better control their spread in homes and urban areas.
However, Henderson said these findings can contribute to better understanding the species and to get the public interested.
“One of the things we could look at would be what makes the soldier different from the worker,” Henderson said. “This behavioral change could actually be looked at on a chemical level [such as] asking what chemicals and hormones have changed to cause this behavioral shift. Such further research could lead to us using biological control methods to target termites.”
Bhatta, who came to the University fall 2013 from Nepal, said termites are an issue in the southern region of the U.S., and entomology department research helps with pest control.

Gallery • 4 Photos

Emily Brauner

LSU graduate Dependra Bhatta researches termites' reaction to suprise stimuli on Thursday, Feb. 19, 2015 in the Life Science Building.