Termites are a good food source, being rich in proteins, fats, vitamins and many essential mineral nutrients, and thus provide food security for poor households. We report on a survey conducted in the Vhembe District Municipality of Limpopo Province, South Africa, to identify edible termite species and find out how they are harvested, prepared, graded, packaged and marketed. We also looked at the socio-economic factors of the harvesters, marketers and consumers. Using a structured questionnaire, 104 individuals were interviewed from 48 villages. Most of the harvesters were over the age of 60 years but termites are consumed by the whole family. The results of the survey revealed that only three termite species are consumed: soldiers of Macrotermes falciger (89.90%), M. natalensis (8.08%) and M. michaelseni (2.02%). The preferred method of preparation was frying (77.55% of the respondents). At least 80.77% of the respondents indicated that some religions have restrictions on termite consumption but no ethnic restrictions were reported. The income derived from selling termites was estimated to range from ZAR2040 to ZAR17 680 per annum between April 2015 and April 2016. The results of this study showed that edible termites contribute significantly to the livelihoods of many rural families and this indigenous knowledge should be passed on to younger generations. Research on the sustainability of termite harvesting is recommended.

Background Termites are an important food resource for many human populations around the world, and are a good supply of nutrients. The fungus-farming ‘higher’ termite members of Macrotermitinae are also consumed by modern great apes and are implicated as critical dietary resources for early hominins. While the chemical nutritional composition of edible termites is well known, their microbiomes are unexplored in the context of human health. Here we sequenced the V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene of gut microbiota extracted from the whole intestinal tract of two Macrotermes sp. soldiers collected from the Limpopo region of South Africa. Results Major and minor soldier subcastes of M. falciger exhibit consistent differences in taxonomic representation, and are variable in microbial presence and abundance patterns when compared to another edible but less preferred species, M. natalensis . Subcaste differences include alternate patterns in sulfate-reducing bacteria and methanogenic Euryarchaeota abundance, and differences in abundance between Alistipes and Ruminococcaceae . M. falciger minor soldiers and M. natalensis soldiers have similar microbial profiles, likely from close proximity to the termite worker castes, particularly during foraging and fungus garden cultivation. Compared with previously published termite and cockroach gut microbiome data, the taxonomic representation was generally split between termites that directly digest lignocellulose and humic substrates and those that consume a more distilled form of nutrition as with the omnivorous cockroaches and fungus-farming termites. Lastly, to determine if edible termites may point to a shared reservoir for rare bacterial taxa found in the gut microbiome of humans, we focused on the genus Treponema . The majority of Treponema sequences from edible termite gut microbiota most closely relate to species recovered from other termites or from environmental samples, except for one novel OTU strain, which clustered separately with Treponema found in hunter-gatherer human groups. Conclusions Macrotermes consumed by humans display special gut microbial arrangements that are atypical for a lignocellulose digesting invertebrate, but are instead suited to the simplified nutrition in the fungus-farmer diet. Our work brings to light the particular termite microbiome features that should be explored further as avenues in human health, agricultural sustainability, and evolutionary research. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12866-019-1540-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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