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164 COLLEGE ENTOMOLOGY
11. Sterile, Aborted, or Sexually Arrested Forms.
4. Workers.
Soft, pale-colored, wholly apterous individuals, usually without eyes
except in those species that forage above ground, in which case rather
well-developed, reduced, or vestigial compound eyes may be present.
The mouth parts are adapted to reduction of various types of hard and
soft vegetable. materials. They show little specific differentiation and
are difficult to classify. They are occasionally dimorphic, rarely trimorphic,
and constitute small, intermediate, and large sizes in the
higher genera, Termes, Odonlotermes, and Nasutitermes. Workers perform
all of the duties of the colonies except reproduction, defense, and
dispersion. They construct the termitaria, galleries, covered passageways,
and fungus gardens, collect and provide the food, feed the
queen, soldiers, and young, care for the eggs, and, in species without
soldiers, they also defend the colonies against marauders.
Workers do not appear in all genera of termites. In Zootermopsis
and Archotermopsis the nymphs perform the work.
5. Soldiers.
The members of this caste are of either sex and mayor may not have
compound eyes. Faceted eyes occur in Hodotermes, vestigial ocelli
may sometimes be present, and the antennre have fewer segments
than in the reproduciives. There may be large, intermediate, and small
individuals. The soldiers are highly specialized in development of the
head and the mandibles and accordingly may be divided into two
types:
(1) Mandibulate - in which the head is very greatly enlarged and
heavily chitinized, and the mandibles greatly developed into
variously shaped effective or, in some cases, seemingly useless
weapons of defense. So prominent are these in many species
that the soldiers are unable to procure their own food, and must
be fed by the workers. They are the protectors of the colony
who either plug up the burrows or runways with their enlarged
heads or guard the entrances with snapping mandibles.
(2) Nasute - in which the head is prolonged into a snout and used
to smear a sticky secretion upon their enemies in warfare. These
individuals arc, as a rule, smaller than those of the mandibulate
type, and have vest.igial mandibles and well-developed palpi.
The life history of termites is exceedingly complicated, and there are still
disagreements as to the cause of the origin of castes. The eggs are pale, smooth,
oval, or elongated, and the young all appear very much alike. The food is pre"
pared either by the queen, the workers, or the immature reproductives. It consists
of saliva, various forms of dead or living vegetable substances, and fungi
as well as proctodreal matter, the cast skins, and the dead of the colony. Licking
and grooming each other is a characteristic of termites. Breeding continues
throughout t.he year, and individual queens may live from several to many