I am interested on woody debris decomposition in tropical environments. Are there any techniques or approaches to control termite effect during the decomposition process? Any articles out there?
You could try disrupting their feeding behavior with playback of vibrational alarm calls - see Inta R, Evans TA, Lai JCS (2009). Effect of vibratory soldier alarm signals on the foraging behavior of subterranean termites (Isoptera: Rhinotermitidae). J Econ Entomol 102(1):121-126.
Although I'm not sure whether you have the possibility to study vibrational communication in your species.
There are several methods you could consider, depending on your research question. What is your question exactly? Do you want to quantify the amount of wood decomposed by different organisms, such as termites, wood-boring beetles, and fungi? Are you interested in other factors, such as soil type, rainfall, or the location of the wood? For example, the wood may be above ground (dead standing trees or dead branches on trees), on the ground (fallen dead branches, fallen dead trees), or underground (dead roots, or fallen branches that have been covered by soil).
You can use wrap wood with woven metal mesh of various gap sizes to prevent access by different organisms. There is a commercial product "Termimesh" http://www.termimesh.com.au/ but it isn't available in China. There are many other types of metal mesh, so you could trial those available to you in your location to determine which would work for your experiment.
You can use insecticides. There are many different types with various modes of action, so you should be careful in choosing. Many papers have used insecticides for exclusion; eg. my paper on crop yield Evans et al 2011 Nature Comms 2, 262 doi:10.1038/ncomms1257 or Bagchi et al 2014 Nature doi:10.1038/nature12911.
Good luck
You can use concentrated brine to control termites,as they just can't survive in such a medium.This is the technique used by Indian farmers to remove them from structural wood.
Yes, what is your research question or hypothesis and what is your experimental design?. Because of their cryptic nature, termites are not easy animals to work with.
Best wishes
Thanks a lot to you guys answers. These will help me a lot.
Concerning my research questions, the main interest for me would be to disentangle the contribution of arthropods especially termites in woody debris decomposition in tropical environment. I guess now, that I could design a lab manipulations with free termites treatments either by using "Termitesmesh", or termites specific poison. And later scale it up in the natural field.
Once again thanks for your answers
In a controlled lab experiment you could first pasturise or even sterilise your wood sample, and then add the biological agent for which you wish to study the decomposition activity (fungi, cellulolytic bacteria, insects etc...). introducing chemicals is tricky as this may interfere with the biological activity of organisms even after treatment.
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