At certain seasons of the year the nor mal winged (macropterous) males and fe males issue from well-established colonies in great swarms and after coming to the ground cast off their wings. Enormous numbers are devoured by birds, lizards and other animals, while the few survivors pair and found new colonies. The mated couple—king and queen—excavate a small chamber in wood, in the ground or other situation, and remain together, feeding and caring for the offspring until enough workers or young nymphs have been reared to take over the duties. Mating goes on at irregular intervals, the king cohabiting with the queen for life. Among the more primitive termites large nests contain numerous kings and queens, but in the higher forms only a single royal pair is present. In such cases the queen develops into a huge inert egg-laying machine, incapable of locomotion, and remaining with her relatively tiny mate in a special royal cell where the couple are fed and tended by their numerous progeny. In species of Termes the queen may possibly attain a length of four inches and may lay 4,000 or more eggs a day and many mih lions during a lifetime of perhaps ten years. The brachypterous and apterous reproductive forms are usually regarded as sup plementary royalties, which take the place of either of the original royal forms in the event of their death; possibly also they extend the colony or found subsidiary communities, but little is known on this point. These peculiar forms produce no winged adults among their progeny, but only their own types and the sterile forms. The greater part of the duty of feeding the brood and nest-building is performed by the workers, while the soldiers are mainly concerned with defence. The large-jawed type of soldier is apparently less efficient in this respect than the nasute soldier, the pungent secretion of whose frontal gland having a very salutary effect upon ants which, it may be added, are per ennial enemies of termites.
The feeding habits of termites are both complex and remarkable. Living and dead plant tissues form the staple food but ter mites have also developed an elaborate system of mutual feeding or trophallaxis. They feed one another, and more especially the brood and royal forms, with regurgi tated food, faeces and also saliva and there is also evidence that all castes pro duce exudations of glandular products from the skin, which are licked by other members of the community : since the queen pro duces the most copious and palatable exudation she is assiduously tended and licked by her brood. Some termites, like ants, store up food, especially lichens, fragments of grasses, etc., but the analogy between the two groups of insects is exemplified more strikingly in the case of fungus-growing termites. Cer tain of the higher genera form comb-like fungus gardens and their nymphs graze in these miniature fields like so many tiny sheep; the soldiers and workers do not use this food, but the royal forms are fed upon it like the young.
The relations of termite communities of different species to one another have been comparatively little studied. Sometimes several species share a compound nest, but their respective galleries are kept separate, while some soldierless species have only been found in the nests of kinds in which that caste is present. A host of other insects or termito philes live within the termitaria on much the same terms as myrmecophiles exist in ants' nests.