Polyethism in the Case of Feeding, Construction, and Defense Behaviors of Odontotermes formo sanus Shiraki

South of China always invaded by O. formosanus Shiraki. This species is one of the main causes of damage to the forests, crops, buildings, boats and even water preserving constructions like dams. In this paper we studied the main trees invaded by this species. Cinnamomum camphora was the main target for this species (33% of all the cases), along with Sophora japonica (21%), Liriodendron chinensis (11%), Cunninghamia lanceolata (11%) Robinia pseudoacacia (5%), Magnolia denudata (5%), Metasequoia glyptostroboides (5%), Prunus mume (3%), Catalpa speciosa (3%), Ulmus pumila (3%), and Castanea sativa (3%). The foragers ridden the tree were collected and a column charts depicted based on their head width. Based on the peaks in the column charts, five instars of workers can be predicted at the foraging sites. Three middle instars are most frequent workers at foraging sites. In addition the polyethism of foragers, workers and soldiers, have been investigated in the case of defense and construction. The results have shown that the workers with smaller head width have more potential to participate in construction behaviors especially breaking shelter tubes. Also, early defense behavior mostly has done by soldiers with smaller head width whilst the later after 50 minutes however the number of soldiers with bigger head width increased but the total number of soldiers plummeted.