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Petrified Wood, Termite Coprolites and Unknowns


GeschWhat

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Hi all,

 

Here is piece of petrified wood with coprolites. I sent an inquiry about a year ago to a termite expert who had helped me in the past, but didn't heard back this time. It happens.  I don't know if we have any termite experts here in the forum, so I thought I would put this one out there just in case.

 

It was found in sandy soil near the Belgium border at the Buschtunnel, in the forested Preuswald District of Aachen, Germany. What is interesting about this specimen is that it contains coprolites of different sizes and what I believe might be termite balls. I am thinking the larger coprolites could possibly be from a queen/king, but may be from a totally difference species of arthropod. One gallery has tiny ovoid structures that are the right size for termite eggs, but their shape seems wrong, so I am thinking maybe they could be from juveniles. With the exception of the hexagonal termite coprolites, the labels are just guesses on my part. Any insight would be helpful.

 

Also, can anyone tell what type of wood this is?

 

As always, thanks a bunch!

 

In case you are wondering, termite balls are fungi balls that mimic termite eggs. They survive by tricking termites into thinking they are their eggs so the termites take care of them. Fun, huh? :D

 

 

 

 

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Termite-Coprolite-Petrified-Wood-Aachen-Germany-2.jpg

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That's a pretty nice work of you, Lori, excellent photos, as always.

For those like me who have no knowledge about the termite faecal pellets, I will cite from J. Isabel Sutherland. 2003. Miocene petrified wood and associated borings and termite faecal pellets from Hukatere Peninsula, Kaipara Harbour, North Auckland, New Zealand. Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 33:1, 395-414. (see doushantuo's link)

 

" A hexagonal shape is unusual for faecal pellets and is produced by some anobiid beetles as well as some termites (Weidner 1956). The beetle pellets are much larger and more irregularly formed than those of termites. Among the termites only the kalotermitids (dry-wood termites) and termopsids (damp-wood termites) produce hexagonal faecal pellets; other termite groups produce pasty or liquid faeces (Rohr et al. 1986). The pellets of the dry-wood termites are smaller and more regularly formed than those of the damp-wood termites (Light 1934). Drywood termites form hexagonal faecal pellets by the pressure of six bands of muscle which squeeze remaining water out of the faecal mass in the rectum. This water is then collected in rectal grooves for retention by the termite (Child 1934). Lance (1946) noted that the exact shape of the pellet depended on diet and moisture content.
Harvey (1934) illustrated characteristic workings of the extant American dry-wood termite, Kalotermes minor, which are similar to the burrows in the wood from Coates Bay. He noted that although sapwood was preferred, galleries were usually present in the hardwood as well, and that the summer wood was riddled as rapidly and thoroughly as the spring wood. Rohr et al. (1986) showed a transverse section of Upper Cretaceous wood where most of the middle of the wood has been burrowed and filled with faecal pellets in a pattern that appears to broadly follow a growth ring.
Most of the species of termite known as fossils have been described from wings or from the remains of insects preserved in amber. No fossil termite remains have been recorded in New Zealand. No traces of termite bodies, moulted exoskeletons, termitophiles (Gay 1970), opportunist dwellers in the burrows, or of any other animals were found in the Coates Bay borings. Child (1934) noted that termites normally eat the dead in their colonies, the chitinous portions of termites and other dead insects probably serving as part of their diet. If the colony was alive at the time that the host tree was overwhelmed by pyroclastic ash it is perhaps surprising that fossils other than faecal pellets have not been found. The parts of the burrow that were occupied by the colony may have been more exposed to weathering than the parts in filled with faecal pellets, so that any termite body parts remaining after the carbonisation of the pyroclastic flow were not preserved.
Light (1930) described termite faecal pellets replaced by calcium carbonate from the Pleistocene Seminole Beds of Florida. These pellets are hexagonal but larger than those produced by modern Kalotermitidae. Weidner (1956) described 2 mm long and 1 mm diam. hexagonal pellets in Eocene amber. Rohr et al. (1986) recorded sub-hexagonal faecal pellets 0.75 mm long and 0.5 mm diam. from the Cretaceous of Texas and attributed them to Kalotermitidae. Rogers (1938) described termite faecal pellets in opalised wood from the Pliocene of Santa Barbara County, California. These last pellets, which are slightly smaller but otherwise similar to New Zealand examples, were first interpreted as opal pseudomorphs after euhedral quartz crystals (Rogers 1928) before being recognised as faecal pellets (Rogers 1938).
Lance (1946) described Pleistocene Pinus wood containing faecal pellets from two species of termite which he interpreted as Kalotermes minor and Zootermopsis sp. The Kalotermes pellets were about 0.8 mm long and most had one end slightly pointed. The damp-wood termite pellets were larger averaging about 1.4 mm long. Rozefelds & De Baar (1991) described frass from a mid-Tertiary rain forest in Queensland, Australia, that they compared to that of Neotermes (Kalotermitidae). These pellets were up to 2.6 mm long, larger than the New Zealand examples. "

 

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" We are not separate and independent entities, but like links in a chain, and we could not by any means be what we are without those who went before us and showed us the way. "

Thomas Mann

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That paper was really interesting, especially the part about the anobiid beetles. Can anyone guess what I was googling after I read it? You know, if anyone was/is monitoring my search history...well, I probably need not say more. Anyway, I haven't been able to find anything on the beetle pellets/frass. If I ever decide to write a paper, it will have tons of pictures. I wonder if the beetle larva could/would be in the same tunnels as termites. Maybe there is some species that lay their eggs in termite tunnels. I really need to find an extant termite expert.

 

I thought this part of the paper was interesting as well. I need to go through all my termite coprolite specimens to see if I can find fungal hyphae!

 

"Fungi

Thread-like structures on the surface of some faecal pellets are tentatively identified as silicified fungal hyphae (D1, Fig. 25), and probably represent part of the normal decay process. Fungal hyphae have been identified in silicified wood (e.g., Buurman 1972; Scurfield 1979). Insect borings often have fungi on the burrow walls, e.g., Platypus sp. burrows (Milligan 1979a) but these have not been recognised in the fossil borings. Larger structures typical of fungal breakdown of extant wood, as described by Butcher (1974), are rare, probably because the wood was alive or recently dead at the time of burial. In one sample of Avicennia (D2, Fig. 29) the spaces opened in the wood by decay have been infilled with silica."

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Yup! I hesitate to cite that part, thinking you will read... :)

" We are not separate and independent entities, but like links in a chain, and we could not by any means be what we are without those who went before us and showed us the way. "

Thomas Mann

My Library

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