The Sunday News
Know Your Wildlife
Termites (common Eng), inhlwa (Ndebele), ishwa and majuru (Shona)
Introduction
THE last article on stink bugs raised a lot of questions, first of all, the picture that accompanied the article was incorrect and did not match the description, please ignore the picture and use the description for identification.
Secondly many researchers have looked into the issue of stink bugs, harurwa in Bikita and a lot of theories and varying opinions exist on this natural heritage as well as the intangible cultural heritage surrounding it but the main focus in this is that this insect is a very important resource to surrounding communities and has had great impact on livelihoods and cultural beliefs as well as conservation of the site where they occur. It is one of the main contributors to the culture of entomophagy in the country.
Thank you all to those readers who gave feedback on the previous Edible insect story. Our edible insects for this month are termites, ishwa in shona and inhlwa in Ndebele.
Description
Termites are insects with three distinct body segments (head, thorax and abdomen), six legs and two pairs of wings on the reproductive castes. They are social insects that live in colonies and differ in sizes from small to very large with the queen being very large and the body of a large soldier is approximately 18 millimetres that of a small worker is between five and eight millimetres in length. They have soft white bodies and live in cooperative interdependent colonies of one species and have a clear-cut division of labour among castes. Their nests are very large (75cm to 200cm tall) usually conical or dome shaped. The soldiers have big yellowish brown to dark brown heads, white bodies and the abdomens are nearly transparent.
Ecology
Termites are very secretive, they construct mounds in which they live and move in, if exposed the workers quickly rebuild the disturbed structure in order to cover the colony. Some species construct mounds of up to four metres which are normally found in open bush or grassland areas. These species are economically important.
The reproductive castes are rarely seen on the surface, except after the first heavy rains in the rainy season and it seems with climate change their “swarming” behaving has noticeably changed in some areas. An interesting characteristic of some of these species of termites is that their colonies care for and feed on developing fungi. If you have ever dug through a termite nest, you probably came across some whitish coral-like substance, these are called fungus gardens kept by termites and parasitised on by ants, some ant species that are associated with termite mounds will be after these fungi. The termites chew up plant matter to construct the special fungus gardens on which special fungi grow for food.
Biology
Termites are in the order isopteran and are not related to ants which are in the order hymenoptera. The large termites are in the family termitidae, a large family making up 80 percent of the Southern African termite species.
There is only one queen in a colony, usually the largest and most protected, whose role is laying eggs. A king and queen pair up during an annual mating flight and start a new termite colony. At first, they produce worker and soldier termites that care for the nest. Then later they start making alates — winged reproductive termites —that are able to start their own colonies. Later the queen lays several eggs that become secondary queens to replace her and continue her duties. A more detailed article on these termites and their biology was once written in a previous article in this paper.
COMMENTS
The winged castes and the soldier termites are the edible castes of the termites to humans and trapping methods for food include pitfall traps where a hole is dug next to a nest filled with a small bucket with water and closed with grass on top before they emerge, as the adult reproductive castes emerge together with the soldiers, they drown in the water and can be salted and dried or fried. The use of these insect as food cuts across cultures, it is one of the insects whose use as food is widespread in many tribes and cultures nationwide as it is widely accepted as food.
The availability of the flying alates is seasonal as this mating flight occurs once a year per colony in the rainy season but the availability of the food can stretch over a quarter of a year due to food preservation methods.
This article is written as part of a survey on use of insects as food in Zimbabwe
For feedback and questions on insects in general and if you’d like to volunteer information on any of these topics: Termites a food, which areas there is still a practice of eating them and other insects as food, harvesting and preparation, recipes and when they appear please do not hesitate to contact: The Museum Entomologist at the Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe on: sms or WhatsApp on +263772933071 or post on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/LetsTalkEntomology
