Australian termites and the rafting colony hypothesis

Tuesday, November 15, 2022

1:54 PM – 2:06 PM PT

Location: Vancouver Convention Centre, Meeting Room 217/218/219

Presenting Author(s)

Rebecca A. Clement (she/her/hers)

ORISE Postdoctoral Fellow
USDA - ARS
Washington, District of Columbia

Co-Author(s)

WC

Will Cornwell

University of New South Wales
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
NB

Nic Bone

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Blacksburg, Virginia

Co-Author(s)

MF

Michaela Fitzgerald

Cornell University
Ithaca, New York

Co-Author(s)

BW

Baptiste Joseph Wijas

Post Doctoral Researcher
University of Miami
Petersham, New South Wales, Australia
SS

Stephen Smith

University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan
KC

Keith Crandall

George Washington University
Washington, District of Columbia
PE

Paul Eggleton

Natural History Museum London
London, England, United Kingdom
AZ

Amy Zanne

University of Miami
Miami, Florida

Species distributions are shaped by resource availability, historical biogeography, and ability to adapt to changes in environment or resources. Termites are a group of insects with important impacts on tropical ecosystems with groups specializing to feed on wood, soil, grass, and litter. Despite being poor dispersers, they have a near-global distribution with much of the Australian termite fauna presence likely due to oceanic dispersal. Here, we test the “rafting colony” hypothesis, that today’s Australian termite communities that feed on a variety of substrate types descended from wood-feeding termites rafting across the ocean on their food homes. We reconstruct a phylogeny of Australian termites using publicly available data and test for evolutionary transition rates among feeding groups and biogeographic regions. We find that termites have transitioned to or from Australia at least 26 times. These regional transitions have occurred from wood-feeding, wood-and-soil-feeding, or generalist-feeding termites, but not from soil-feeding or grass-feeding termites. This finding supports the “rafting colony” hypothesis, but also notes the importance of generalist termites in understanding the current distribution of Australian termites.