15 replies to this topic

[ItalianTermiteMan]

Hi! I'm a young man from Emilia-Romagna, Italy, and i joined this forum both to learn something new on ants and to share with you guys info and pics about my favourite animals: termites. They objectively are an exremely interesting, complex and varied infraorder, with a huge ecologic importance and prominence, but scantily known both to the scientific community (except for a few economically important species) and to the hobbyst and layman, which will hardly come to appreciate them due to the scarcity of readily available, reasonably complete and engaging info on the web. I personally think that such fascinating creatures deserve a bit more visibility  .

 

My regards!

[Mercutia]

Glad to have you here! And the more I learn about termites the more I find them so fascinating. If you have any tips on housing them let us know!

[ItalianTermiteMan]

Thanks! Personally i've kept only 4 species: 3 European subterrean Reticulitermes (lucifugus, urbis and grassei, all comparable to the north american counterparts like flavipes) and one "drywood", Kalotermes flavicollis, that despite the english common appellation need water to thrive. However i have direct info on the keeping of Cryptotermes brevis (this time a real drywood) and Coptotermes formosanus, and since i have a dencent knowledge of them i could help with the care of other termites, like soil-feeding or fungus grower species. However it must be noted that the exotic termite keeping it's still a very obscure matter, also because it's so difficult to obtain specimens, so we're all learning here.

[AntLad]

Awesome! I've always wanted termites but never dug up any information on when the Queens fly and how to raise them. They truly are fascinating creatures. Any chance you'll show off some of your colonies? It would be lovely.

Welcome to the forum!

[ItalianTermiteMan]

Thanks again. Now i only keep Reticulitermes, i passed the Kalotermes to a friend of mine some time ago, but i would like to collect them again if i will take a trip to Souther Italy (where i live they are not present).  Both these genera present ergatoid neotenics that developes directly from the working caste. This means that you can obtain a viable colony by simply prelevate workers/pseudergates, though differentiation could take some time.

[ANTdrew]

Welcome! Fascinating stuff; you should definitely make some termite journals.

[wyattparx]

Hi! I'm a young man from Emilia-Romagna, Italy, and i joined this forum both to learn something new on ants and to share with you guys info and pics about my favourite animals: termites. They objectively are an exremely interesting, complex and varied infraorder, with a Nox Vidmate VLC huge ecologic importance and prominence, but scantily known both to the scientific community (except for a few economically important species) and to the hobbyst and layman, which will hardly come to appreciate them due to the scarcity of readily available, reasonably complete and engaging info on the web. I personally think that such fascinating creatures deserve a bit more visibility  .

 

 

 

My regards!

Welcome

Edited by wyattparx, August 31 2019 - 12:20 PM.

[Nare]

Thanks again. Now i only keep Reticulitermes, i passed the Kalotermes to a friend of mine some time ago, but i would like to collect them again if i will take a trip to Souther Italy (where i live they are not present).  Both these genera present ergatoid neotenics that developes directly from the working caste. This means that you can obtain a viable colony by simply prelevate workers/pseudergates, though differentiation could take some time.

I'm always interested in how different people keep their Reticulitermes - any chance you'd make a journal for them, or share some pictures?

[ItalianTermiteMan]

I keep them in a natural-like setup, inside a soft (mycelium-degraded but still white, "beetle-quality") wood log buried in soil and detritus, with added springtails and small Isopods, kept in high humidity but good air exchange, i already had problems with fungi and slime molds in an stagnant environement with little areation. Temperature of around 25-26 C. I had my phone stolen a few days ago, but i can recover some pics from FB from a pair of months ago when i opened a bit of wood to check them, i found many eggs but only few small nymphs. I also checked them just yesterday by scraping off a bit of the log and isolated a little population of workers and nymphs (of which i found many of various stages, so the eggs are developing well) in a test tube setup, more to be able to actually see some of them than anything. Here's a pair of pics, these are R. lucifugus, i started this colony with workers and some wing buds-sporting nymphs by the way: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had success with urbis by keeping them in the same way and with grassei (imported from Spain) in an orizontal acrylic nest floored with toilet paper (they never covered the plexy but still thrived form months thanks to ergatoid neotenics), however these grassei dried up when i took a long trip to Nicaragua, and my brother don't added enough water to them (i'm still thankful to him though, he cared for my mantids, dart frogs, ants and tarantulas for almost one moth and an half despite don't caring in the slightest about these animals i'm sure he did his best). I could also search some of their pics in FB.

[ItalianTermiteMan]

And these are the grassei i was talking about, as said i kept them in acrylic (with tp flooring in the inner chambers of course). 

In the centre you can see a breeding female neotenic, they were 3 of them, 2 females and one male, already present when i received the colny but not yet breeeding. When my other Reticulitermes populations will grow enough i will search for this Acrylic nest and use it again, because the visibility remained excellent for months. Maybe i will also a make a journal bout them, starting the colony with young nymphs and workers and observing their caste and neotenic development.

 

 

[Nare]

I keep them in a natural-like setup, inside a soft (mycelium-degraded but still white, "beetle-quality") wood log buried in soil and detritus, with added springtails and small Isopods, kept in high humidity but good air exchange, i already had problems with fungi and slime molds in an stagnant environement with little areation. Temperature of around 25-26 C. I had my phone stolen a few days ago, but i can recover some pics from FB from a pair of months ago when i opened a bit of wood to check them, i found many eggs but only few small nymphs. I also checked them just yesterday by scraping off a bit of the log and isolated a little population of workers and nymphs (of which i found many of various stages, so the eggs are developing well) in a test tube setup, more to be able to actually see some of them than anything. Here's a pair of pics, these are R. lucifugus, i started this colony with workers and some wing buds-sporting nymphs by the way: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had success with urbis by keeping them in the same way and with grassei (imported from Spain) in an orizontal acrylic nest floored with toilet paper (they never covered the plexy but still thrived form months thanks to ergatoid neotenics), however these grassei dried up when i took a long trip to Nicaragua, and my brother don't added enough water to them (i'm still thankful to him though, he cared for my mantids, dart frogs, ants and tarantulas for almost one moth and an half despite don't caring in the slightest about these animals i'm sure he did his best). I could also search some of their pics in FB.

Wow - look at all those eggs! I can only dream of having that many in my colonies.

[ItalianTermiteMan]

In my aforementioned log there surely is a veritable nursery right now, keeping them like this is not very engaging though, i can't see them! But i am happy to have a quite enstablished colony going anyway, and when they will multiply enough i will use them to experiment with various setups (i liked the aforementioned acrylic nest) and starting population, using variable numbers of workers and nymphs at different stages. For now, however, i will keep them quiet, i already harassed them yesterday.

[Nare]

In my aforementioned log there surely is a veritable nursery right now, keeping them like this is not very engaging though, i can't see them! But i am happy to have a quite enstablished colony going anyway, and when they will multiply enough i will use them to experiment with various setups (i liked the aforementioned acrylic nest) and starting population, using variable numbers of workers and nymphs at different stages. For now, however, i will keep them quiet, i already harassed them yesterday.

That's what I am doing presently - I have a few founding pairs sourced from sibling alates, but I also have 3 different setups that I am trying to start colonies in with workers and nymphs.

[ItalianTermiteMan]

Best luck with them then! Which species are they if i man ask?

Edited by ItalianTermiteMan, August 31 2019 - 4:56 PM.

[Nare]

Best luck with them then! Which species are they if i man ask?

Reticulitermes flavipes. They're invasive to my area, but there are no other native termite species, and their distribution here is almost entirely urban because it is too cold during the winter for them to survive without heat from homes. At least that is the working theory.

[ItalianTermiteMan]

That species have also been recently identified in a pair of restricted urban areas in northern Italy. Now we have 3 Reticulitermes, though this one is better contained!