Tunneling response of termites to a pre-formed tunnel
Sang-Hee Lee1, Rou-Ling Yang, Nan-Yao Su
1Division of Industrial Mathematics, National Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Daejeon, South Korea. sunchaos@pusan.ac.kr
Abstract:
Subterranean termites move from place to place while foraging by tunneling through soil. During a period of foraging, they are likely to encounter a number of pre-formed tunnels created by, for example, tree roots or the breaking up of a zone of hard or compacted soil. We systematically observed the behavioral response of tunneling termites to such pre-formed, artificially constructed tunnels at widths, W, of 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0mm, which mimicked pre-formed tunnels in the field. The two tunnels intersected at an angle, theta (=0 degrees , 10 degrees , 20 degrees , 30 degrees , 40 degrees , 50 degrees , and 60 degrees ) formed between the advance direction of a termite tunnel and the perpendicular direction of a pre-formed tunnel. For W=Wc (=0.5mm) and theta
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