The colony feeds exclusively on the fungus that they grow in their underground fungus garden. The workers forage for suitable materials to use as a substrate for their fungus garden, gathering bark, wood fragments, dead leaves and dry dung, and in so doing do considerable damage to crops including wheat, barley, maize, pearl millet, sorghum, sugarcane, groundnut and tea.[3] The material they gather is chewed up and bacteria in their gut help them to digest the cellulose by contributing enzymes such as cellulase and xylanase.[4] The comb is constantly being reprocessed by being passed through the guts of worker termites, which feed on the oldest parts and produce new comb. The fungal hyphae grow swiftly through the newly processed comb. The fungus sometimes produces spherules, asexual reproductive bodies; these are eaten by the workers and also transported intact to be deposited in other parts of the fungus comb.[5]
The establishment of the fungal comb has been studied in a limited number of species. In some, the spherules are swallowed by the winged alates before they swarm, either the males or the females according to species, and retained as a bolus in the gut, the faeces later being used to establish a fungal comb in the new colony. In other species, such as Odontotermes montanus, spherules are not transported, and the comb is established when foraging workers bring back basidiospores which come from the fruiting bodies (mushrooms) of the fungus which grow above ground on the termite mound.[6]
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