The Microbiotic Environment of the Termite Gut Odontotermes Wallonensis: Morphological and Biochemical Assessment

Abstract

The dissected gut from worker termites of Odontotermes wallonensis in a specific medium was incubated, and the microbial colonies were purified for morphological and biochemical studies. There were ten purified isolates, and they were predominantly regular in shape rather than irregular. The color of the isolates was dull yellow, cream, pink and white. Smooth texture was dominant among the isolates. The isolates responded differently to varied biochemical tests. Among the ten purified microbial isolates, all were found to be gram-positive, anaerobic, and not producing hydrogen cyanide except the ninth isolate, which showed positive results on the HCN test. The utilization of nutritional source also differed with isolates. Gut microflora of the termite (O. wallonensis) was also characterized using 16S rRNA gene amplification, yielding DNA fragments of 1300-1500 bp. The sequences aligned with major bacterial phyla i.e Actinobacteria, Firmicutes, Planctomycetes, Bacteroidetes, and Proteobacteria.Termites are predominant invertebrate fauna of pedolith, and they live a well-organized social life. They are the only social insects comprises king, apart from queen, workers and soldiers. Though they are reported to be an ecological engineer responsible for the formation of macroaggregates in soil and the decomposition of litter in the soil ecosystem, they are also the major pests of crops and wooden structures.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.29321/MAJ.10.300011

Pages

65 - 70

Creative Commons

Copyright

© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Madras Agricultural Students' Union in Madras Agricultural Journal (MAJ). This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited by the user.

Keywords