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The reproductive caste of a mature colony includes a fertile female and male, known as the queen and king.61 The queen of the colony is responsible for egg production for its colony. Unlike in ants, the king mates with her for life.62 In certain species, the abdomen of this queen swells up radically to increase fecundity, a characteristic known as physogastrism.61 Depending on the species, the queen begins producing reproductive winged alates at a certain time of the year, and huge swarms emerge in the colony when nuptial flight begins.
A young termite nymph. Nymphs first moult into workers, but others might further moult to become soldiers or alates.
Termites are often compared with all the social Hymenoptera (ants and various species of bees and wasps), but their differing evolutionary origins result in significant differences in life span. In the eusocial Hymenoptera, the employees are exclusively female. Men (drones) are haploid and develop from unfertilised eggs, while females (both employees and the queen) are diploid and grow from fertilised eggs.
Depending on species, male and female employees may have different roles in a termite colony.63.
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The entire life span of a termite begins with an egg, but is different from that of a bee or ant in that it goes through a developmental process called incomplete metamorphosis, with egg, nymph and adult phases.64 Nymphs resemble small adults, and undergo a series of moults as they develop.
The development of nymphs into adults can take months; the time period depends on food availability, temperature, and the general population of the colony. Since nymphs are unable to feed themselves, workers must feed them, but workers also take part in the social life of their colony and also have certain different tasks to achieve like foraging, building or maintaining the nest or tending to the queen.5367 Pheromones govern the caste system in termite colonies, preventing all but a very few of those termites from becoming fertile queens.68.
Queens of the eusocial termite Reticulitermes speratus are effective at a long lifespan without sacrificing fecundity. These long-lived queens have a significantly lower degree of oxidative damage, including oxidative DNA damage, than employees, soldiers and nymphs.69 The decreased degrees of harm appear to be due to increased catalase, an enzyme that protects against oxidative stress.69.
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For instance, alates in certain species emerge during the daytime in summer while others emerge during winter.71 The nuptial flight may also begin at dusk, when the alates swarm around areas with lots of lights. The time when nuptial flight begins depends on the environmental conditions, the time of day, moisture, wind speed and precipitation.71 The number of termites in a colony also fluctuates, with the larger species typically having 1001,000 individuals.
The queen only lays 1020 eggs in the check my source very early phases of the colony, but lays as many as 1,000 a day when the colony is several years old.53 At adulthood, a main queen has a fantastic capability to lay eggs. In some species, the adult queen includes a greatly distended abdomen and might produce 40,000 eggs per day.72 The two adult ovaries may have some 2,000 ovarioles each.73 The abdomen increases the queen's body length to several times more than prior to mating and reduces her ability to move freely; attendant workers provide assistance. .
The king develops only slightly bigger after initial mating and continues to partner with the queen for life (a termite queen can live between 30Â to 50Â years); this is quite different from ant colonies, in that a queen mates once together with the man (s) and stores the gametes for lifetime, as the male ants die soon after mating.6267 When your queen is absent, a termite king generates pheromones which encourage the development of replacement termite queens.74 Since the queen and king are monogamous, sperm competition does not happen.75.
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Termites going through incomplete metamorphosis on the path to becoming alates form a subcaste in certain species of termite, functioning as potential supplementary reproductives. These supplementary reproductives only grow into main reproductives upon the passing of a king or queen, or when the primary reproductives are separated from the colony.6676 Supplementaries have the ability to replace a dead principal reproductivesystem, and there can also be greater than a single supplementary within a colony.53 Some queens have the capacity to switch from sexual reproduction to asexual reproduction.