Termites Are Master Ecosystem Builders

Why termites are critical for
the Earth’s ecology and their
evolution baffles evolutionists

by Jerry Bergman, PhD

The more we learn about the living world, the more complex it becomes. A recent summary of the current research on termites (also called white ants) concluded that they are

among the most important organisms to maintain ecosystem health. Without them, habitats like rainforests would likely fail, and animals depending on termites would die.”[1]

Furthermore “termites are by far the most ecologically important invertebrate decomposers.”[2] An understanding of them is “essential for preserving natural ecosystems and protecting human infrastructure and investments.”[3]

Termites live in large mounds, often made from mud, consisting of an extensive system of tunnels and conduits that serve as a ventilation system for their underground nest. The mound, built above the subterranean nest, consists of numerous gallery chambers, well-designed rooms and passageways.[4] Over one million termites typically live in the nest.

Like ants, termites have “extremely complex social lives and enormously intricate living environments.”[5] They are socially and structurally complex to the extent that researchers were required to develop complex mathematical equations to understand how termites dig and forage.

Different castes include kings, queens, soldiers, and workers. The soldiers’ job is to defend the colony from unwanted animals. The workers are completely blind, wingless, and sexually immature. They are the smallest in size, and the most numerous termite type. Their job is to feed, house, and groom all of the other termites. The kings and queens reproduce and rule the nest. These different roles require very different body features.

Sexually developed termites are winged when mature to enable them to fly out of the nest to establish a new colony. When a new colony is established, they lose their wings and become kings or queens. This “social swarming,” usually occurs during warm, humid spring or summer evenings. After these swarms, hundreds of discarded wings will be seen on windowsills, tiles, crevices, and door tracks.[6]

Termite Nests

Their nests consist of “regularly spaced floors connected by scattered linear and helicoidal ramps.” They are described as “

one of the architectural wonders of the living world, built by the collective action of workers in a colony. Each nest has several characteristic structural motifs that allow for efficient ventilation, cooling, and movement.[7]

Termite nests are among the most complex structures produced by animal societies.[8] The major studies of their nests ignore the problem of how termites evolved the ability to construct these complex nests out of mud, straw, and other plant material.

Termite evolution

Understanding their evolution requires comprehending how they survived before learning how to build their complex nests. Their brain and pheromone systems had to first evolve to produce the nests. What was the first step and how could they evolve by natural selection? Darwin said that natural selection works “solely by accumulating slight, successive, favorable variations; it can produce no great or sudden modifications; it can act only by short and slow steps.”[9]

Raven, after describing their complexity and importance to the ecosystem, totally ignored speculating about their evolution. This is understandable given that theories of the basic details of termite evolution are still unknown. Some of the main problems of termite evolution pertain to the rate of change. Did it evolve by slow and gradual evolution or rapidly?[10]

Another problem is the excellent termite fossil record does not show any evidence of evolution. If they had evolved, some evidence for their evolution would be revealed in the fossil record which extends back to, evolutionists estimate, close to 40 million years. This is an enormous amount of time, yet the fossils were marvelously preserved in Baltic amber. The details preserved show they are identical to today’s termites despite 40 million years of claimed evolution. Furthermore, no plausible precursor common ancestor of termites has ever been postulated by evolutionists.

The assumption is that modern termites descended from some unknown common ancestor that evolutionists believe lived around the end of the Jurassic, supposedly some 150 million years ago. Evolutionists believe they are the earliest eusocial organisms known from the extant fossil record.[11] The conclusion of the experts is that “many aspects of termite evolution remain speculative, as most termite biological diversity and evolutionary trajectories have yet to be explored.”[12]

Summary

Termites are very complex, well-designed creatures that serve critical ecological roles on Earth. They are good examples of living fossils that have not changed in thousands of years as documented by hundreds of examples preserved in amber. No evidence exists of their evolution, nor have Darwinists been able to postulate a plausible evolutionary history from some common ancestor.

References

[1] Raven, C.,“White ants: The Earth’s backboneless backbone. How termites serve the biosphere,” University of the          Sunshine Coast, A. US; https://www.usc.edu.au/about/unisc-news/news-archive/2024/august/white-antsthe-  earth-s- 2 August 2024.

[2] Raven, 2024.

[3] Raven, 2024.

[4] Lüscher, M., “Air-conditioned termite nests,” Scientific American 205(1):138–147, 1961.

[5] Raven, 2024.

[6] Raven, 2024.

[7] Heyde, A., et al., “Self-organized biotectonics of termite nests,”Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences 118(5):e2006985118, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2006985118, 2021.

[8] Heyde, A.,et al., 2021

[9] Darwin, C., On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, John Murray, London, UK, P. 413, 1859.

[10] Venditti, C., and M. Pagel, “Speciation and bursts of evolution,” Evolution: Education and Outreach 1: 274–280, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12052-008-0049-4, 2008.

[11] Mizumoto, N., et al., “Extinct and extant termites reveal the fidelity of behavior fossilization in amber,” 121(12):e2308922121, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2308922121, 2024.

[12] Chouvenc, T., “Termite evolution: Mutualistic associations, key innovations, and the rise of Termitidae,” Cellular Molecular Life Sciences 78(6):2749–2769, March 2021.

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Dr. Jerry Bergman has taught biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology for over 40 years at several colleges and universities including Bowling Green State University, Medical College of Ohio where he was a research associate in experimental pathology, and The University of Toledo. He is a graduate of the Medical College of Ohio, Wayne State University in Detroit, the University of Toledo, and Bowling Green State University. He has over 1,900 publications in 14 languages and 40 books and monographs. His books and textbooks that include chapters that he authored are in over 1,800 college libraries in 27 countries. So far over 80,000 copies of the 60 books and monographs that he has authored or co-authored are in print. For more articles by Dr Bergman, see his Author Profile.