Foraging Macrotermes natalensis Fungus-Growing Termites Avoid a Mycopathogen but Not an Entomopathogen

Abstract

Fungus-growing termites have to defend both themselves and their monoculture fungal cultivars from antagonistic microbes. One of the ways that pathogens can enter the termite colony is on the plant substrate that is collected by termite foragers. In order to understand whether foragers avoid substrate infected with antagonists, we offered sub-colonies of Macrotermes natalensis a choice between food exposed to either a mycopathogenic or an entomopathogenic fungus, and control food. Workers did not show any preference between entomopathogen-exposed and control substrate, but significantly avoided the mycopathogen-exposed substrate. This suggests that the behaviour of foraging workers is more strongly influenced by pathogens affecting their crop than those posing risks to the termite workers themselves.

The Effects of Trichoderma Fungi on the Tunneling, Aggregation, and Colony-Initiation Preferences of Black-Winged Subterranean Termites, Odontotermes formosanus (Blattodea: Termitidae)

“…Sorokin strain NRRL 30905 was repellent against C. formosanus in different substrates (sand, soil, and sawdust). Bodawatta et al [39] reported that the fungus-growing termite Macrotermes natalensis (Haviland) did not avoid substrate containing the entomopathogenic fungus Beauveria bassiana (Balsamo) Vuillemin isolate #122. Mburu et al [14,15] reported that the repellency of entomopathogenic fungi was determined by their virulence, volatiles, and genotypes.…”

You don’t have the guts: a diverse set of fungi survive passage through Macrotermes bellicosus termite guts

“…A number of complementary defence mechanisms appear to contribute to keep fungus gardens free from other fungi [ 8 , 28 ]. These include termites avoiding antagonists [ 29 ], burying unwanted fungi [ 30 ], and utilising antimicrobial chemical compounds of termite [ 22 ], Termitomyces [ 8 , 31 , 32 ] and bacterial [ 8 , 20 , 33 , 34 ] origins. In addition, it has been proposed that the obligate first gut passage of all plant substrate used to manure the fungus could serve as a filtering—potentially fungicidal step—accounting for the very low prevalence of non- Termitomyces fungi within fungus combs [ 16 , 35 ].…”

Polyene-Producing Streptomyces spp. From the Fungus-Growing Termite Macrotermes barneyi Exhibit High Inhibitory Activity Against the Antagonistic Fungus Xylaria

“…The success of termite fungiculture depends on multiple factors, such as the control of pathogens within termite fungus farms, termite antimicrobial peptides and gut bacteria with antimicrobial properties ( Um et al, 2013 ; Poulsen, 2015 ; Bodawatta et al, 2019 ). The results in this study revealed that fungus-growing termite M. barneyi -associated actinomycetes produced different type of polyenes, which greatly inhibited competitor fungus Xylaria sp.…”