Fungus-farming termites can protect their crop by confining weeds with fungistatic soil boluses
This study, published in Science (2025) by Aanchal Panchal et al., reveals the sophisticated pest management strategy employed by fungus-farming termites (Odontotermes obesus) to protect their vital fungal crop. It shows that termites actively combat invasive fungal weeds (Pseudoxylaria) by encasing them in specialized soil boluses containing fungistatic microbes. This research highlights a novel, highly targeted defense mechanism where insects integrate specific behaviors with microbial allies to selectively suppress fungal invaders without damaging their cultivated food source, offering key insights into co-evolutionary relationships and potential avenues for natural product discovery.
(DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adr2713)
Figure: O. obesus behavior in response to introduced Pseudoxylaria tuft on comb.
(A) Experimental setup: 20 major workers in an arena with 20 g of autoclaved, moistened soil containing two pieces of fresh fungus combs (FC). FC (left) is the control and FC+P (right) is the fresh comb with an introduced tuft of Pseudoxylaria. (B) (Left) Representative pictures of the different behaviors shown by termites (movies S1 to S3). Yellow arrows indicate the removed Pseudoxylaria hyphae. The bar charts (middle) represent the percentage of plates with the corresponding behavioral outcomes. The darker portions in the pie charts (right) denote the efficiency (in percentage) of each behavior in controlling Pseudoxylaria. (C) Area of comb scraped by the workers on FC versus FC+P (Wilcoxon-signed rank test, P < 0.001). (D) Efficiency of termites in controlling Pseudoxylaria compared with controls lacking termites. Lowercase letters (a, b, c, and d) denote significant statistical differences in a two-proportion Z test (table S1A). (Image Credits: https://www.science.org/ )