Research Projects

Termite mounds are complex structures that house entire colony, provide protection, and facilitate stable internal environments with regulation of temperature, humidity, and gas exchange. Internally mounds contain complex corridors and passageways, enabling termites to navigate throughout. Mound-building termite, Odontotermes obesus maintains a nutritional symbiosis with a fungus Termitomyces which they grow on specialized combs within mounds. Termite mounds may thus be likened to a superorganism, that functions as a homeostatic entity. To build and maintain such huge mounds requires collective, synergistic and close coordination of numerous termites. For instance, if there is a breach in the mound, termites immediately congregate at the breach site and repair it. Such collective behaviors require an efficient and decentralized communication system, a hallmark of most social insects. How do termites communicate with each other? In bees, ants and wasps, visual cues play an important role in communication. Interestingly however, termites lack image-forming compound eyes which suggests that they rely on a sophisticated chemical communication (stigmergic) system. They can also discriminate between their own nestmates and members of another colony which elicit fatal, antagonistic encounters. In this proposal, we seek to determine the components and behavioural algorithms underlying chemical communication in mound-building termites. In my doctoral thesis, I investigated the mechanisms used by termites to control the growth of the weedy fungi, Pseudoxylaria. Specifically, I showed that termites selectively employ a suite of behaviors to weed out invasive fungus while keeping their own fungal crop unaffected. Because termites lack vision, their ability to chemically discriminate between the two fungi is crucial. Hence, I became interested in the chemosensory mediation of colony-level communication that led me to formulate the basic question for my postdoctoral work: How do termites use chemical signals to coordinate collective behaviors, especially during mound construction and repair? This is a topic of study at Dr. Sanjay Sane’s laboratory at NCBS, Bangalore where I hope to conduct this research. My project aims to investigate the sensory and chemical basis of termite communication during mound-building. I hypothesize that this communication has a hierarchical structure, wherein certain pheromonal components signal species-specific cues, whereas others provide indications for mound identity (Hierarchical code hypothesis). An alternative hypothesis is that species and mound-identity is encoded by unique pheromones that form the signature of each mound and species (Signature code hypothesis). Understanding this chemical communication offers valuable insights into how social insects communicate and coordinate to perform collective behaviors, with broader implications for sensory ecology, ecosystem functioning, social behavior, and bio-inspired designs.