TERMITE TOWER: Vibrations reverberate throughout the complex architecture of termite nests, or “termitaria,” which can include spires that reach as high as 3 meters.CHRISTINE STRUCK
While studying termites (Macrotermes bellicosus) in Africa’s Ivory Coast in the late 1990s, animal behavior researcher Wolfgang Kirchner noticed something peculiar as he observed the insects’ colonial mound: “At first, I heard a noise which seemed to move across the surface,” he recalls. “I could really hear it because in that species, and in this place, there were lots of soldiers on the surface of the nest. Then I could see waves of drumming [propagating] across the surface.”
Unfortunately, Kirchner’s field research was interrupted by a military coup that overthrew Ivory Coast President Henri Konan Bédié in 1999. But now, more than 10 years later, he has identified a similar drumming behavior in two related species in the Southern African savanna, M. natalensis and an ...
