What Do Termite Larvae Look Like?
After mating, the queen lays a few eggs that soon hatch into tiny termite larvae. These are fed and nurtured by both the mother and father until they are large enough to begin foraging for wood and other sources of cellulose, at which time the young termites take over the work of feeding the larvae that have hatched from a second set of eggs. When the parents feed their first batch of offspring, the protozoans required to produce the enzyme needed for cellulose digestion are transferred from the mother’s and father’s stomachs to the larvae, and this protozoan inoculum is all that is required to get a culture going in the offspring so that they too, with the aid of the microbes, can digest their own cellulose.
