Termites run some of the most impressive “cities” in the animal world, and their colonies can grow into the millions.

New research suggests that this species’ path to social life was not built by adding genetic upgrades.

Instead, termites appear to have streamlined their genomes, dropping genes that were no longer needed once cooperation and family life took over.

By tracing termites back to their cockroach-like ancestors, the researchers found that key steps toward advanced social organization manifested not as genetic gains but as genetic losses, particularly losses related to reproduction and sperm competition.

These changes suggest that termite evolution was not simply the invention of new behaviors. It was also about restructuring their biology to make living as colonies possible.

Relatives of wood-eating cockroaches

The story begins with a change in lifestyle. Our termite ancestors weren’t born social superstars. they were more similar cockroach And I lived like them.

However, at some point, these insects began to settle in and feed on dead trees. This means they end up eating tough, poor quality food that is difficult to survive on their own.

“Termites evolved from cockroach ancestors to live in and eat wood,” said study lead author Nathan Law. University of Sydney.

“Our study shows that their DNA first changed when they specialized in this poor diet, and then changed again as they became social insects.”

This change is important because although wood is plentiful, it is nutritionally sparse. If you’re going to make a living eating it, you’ll either need some serious biological tricks, or you’ll need help.

Termites came to the rescue. New research suggests that as cooperation became central, the genetic toolkit changed in ways that made it easier to maintain colony life.

Termites lost genes but gained order

To track these changes, the researchers compared the high-quality genomes of cockroaches, ‘waragi’ (a closely related species that already lives in small family groups), and several termite species that differ in colony complexity.

One of the clearest patterns was surprisingly simple. The genomes of termites and woodlice are smaller and less complex than cockroaches. genome.

That’s not what many people expect. A common assumption is that larger, more complex societies require more complex DNA. But the data here point in a different direction.

As termites became dependent on each other, sharing food, dividing labor, and coordinating development, they likely shed many genes related to metabolism, digestion, and reproduction.

“The surprising result is that termites have increased social complexity by losing genetic complexity,” Lo said. “This goes against the common assumption that more complex animal societies require more complex genomes.”

The idea is not that termites have become genetically “degenerate.” The colony became an important unit.

When an individual is dependent on a group for survival, some biological functions may shift from “my job” to “our job,” especially processing food and feeding offspring. During evolution, termites can lose genes that are less useful in shared social systems.

tailless sperm

The most frowned upon loss was related to sperm. In many animals, including cockroaches, females can mate with multiple males, thereby starting competition within the reproductive tract.

Sperm that swim faster and survive longer are more likely to win, so evolution favors features like tails (flagellums) that help sperm move.

Termites are different. termites sperm It has no tail and does not move. It’s such an extreme change that it almost screams that something major has changed in their mating system.

“This loss does not cause monogamy,” Lo said. “Rather, this is a strong indicator that monogamy has already evolved.”

In other words, when termite ancestors became strictly monogamous, the entire “sperm race” disappeared.

Without competition between the sperm of multiple males, there was no longer strong evolutionary pressure to maintain the genetic machinery necessary to build fast-swimming sperm.

“Our results show that the ancestors of termites were strictly monogamous,” Lo said. “Once monogamy was fixed, there was no longer any evolutionary pressure to maintain the genes involved in sperm motility.”

Family ties in termite colonies

This point feeds into a larger discussion about how complex insect societies evolve. One long-standing argument is that the long-term stability of extreme cooperation requires high kinship, or close genetic ties, within the population. Another argument is that relevance is helpful but not necessary.

This study leans in the direction that associations matter, at least for termites. If termite ancestors were indeed strictly monogamous, siblings within a colony would have been very closely related.

Therefore, natural selection tends to favor behaviors in which individuals sacrifice their own reproduction to raise kin. Simply put, siblings share so many genes that even helping them can spread “your” genes.

Food shapes the role of termites

The study also looks inside termite colonies to explain how they maintain their social organization. Termites don’t just happen to give birth to workers and royalty.

This study reports experiments that demonstrate the following: nutrition Early in life, it plays a big role in determining who becomes what.

Larvae that receive abundant food from their older siblings increase their energy metabolism and develop into worker bees.

They do not reproduce, but they build colonies, forage, defend, and feed other animals to stay alive. Larvae with less food grow slowly at first, preserving their potential to become future kings and queens.

“These food-sharing feedback loops allow colonies to fine-tune their workforce,” Roe explained. “These help explain how termites maintain stable, highly efficient societies over long periods of time.”

This is a proper internal management system. For now, some chicks are fed a large amount of food to produce workers, and the remaining chicks are kept in reserve for future reproduction. The colony can adjust its balance as needed.

Inbreeding, but with a purpose

The vacant role is usually filled by one of the royal pair’s own descendants. it produces inbreeding Sounds alarming until you remember what colonies are optimized for: genetic relatedness and social stability within a colony.

This does not mean that termites are exempt from the risk of inbreeding. But this system is likely to persist because it helps maintain the tight genetic bonds that enable evolutionarily extreme cooperation.

lose genes to gain society

Taken together, this study provides a surprisingly sophisticated explanation of how genetic changes helped termites evolve from their cockroach-like ancestors into highly organized, long-lived societies.

The path was not simply to invent new social behaviors. it was also about confinement monogamyreshaping development through food sharing and extinguishing certain genes when they are no longer useful.

“This study shows that understanding social evolution is not just about adding new traits; sometimes it’s also about what evolution chooses to let go of,” Lo concluded.

The research will be published in a journal science.

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