TERMITES
whole winged brood issues from the nest in a great swarm. Since insects are normally winged creatures, it is evident that these flying termites represent the perfect forms of the termite colony—they are, in fact, the sexually mature males and females.
The several forms of individuals in the termite community are known as castes.
An intensive search through the galleries 9f a termite nest might reveal, besides workers, soldiers, and the members of the winged brood in various stages of development, a few individuals of still different kinds. These have heads like the winged forms, but rather larger bodies; some have short wing rudiments (Fig. 80), others have none; and finally there are two individuals, a male and a female, bearing wing stubs from which, evidently, fully-formed wings have been broken off. The male of this last pair is just an ordinary-looking, though dark-bodied termite (Fig. 82 A); but the female is distinguished from all the other members of the colony by the great size of her abdomen (B).
Fig. 79. Adult winged caste of Reticulitermes tibialis, wings shown on one side of the body only. (From Banks and Snyder)
Through the investigations of entomologists it is known that the short-winged, and wingless individuals of this group comprise both males and females that are potentially capable of reproduction, but that in general all the eggs of the colony are actually produced by the large-bodied female, whose consort is the male that has lost his wings. In other words, this fertile
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