Barbara Stay

Termites, like bees, ants, and humans, are social creatures.  We, and they, depend on interactions of individuals within families and colonies for continued existence.  Not only we humans, but these social insects have enormous impact on our habitat, the Earth.  How do these insects, one millionth of our size, do this?  It is by enormous numbers of individuals who sacrifice reproduction for the benefit of the colony.  In termites, a queen and her king, the primary reproductives, produce enormous numbers of offspring that develop into different castes.  Workers provide food and care, not only for the king and queen, but also for the soldiers, defenders of the colony.  Chemical communication between caste members maintains the composition of the colony for the benefit of the whole.  The termite we study is the local subterranean termite Reticulitermes flavipes in which developmental pathways are very flexible; workers, if need be, can develop into soldiers or into supplementary reproductives.  Our interest is in how the social environment is communicated through the brain to the endocrine system that regulates developmental pathways and reproductive ability.

 

Barbara Stay's Faculty Page