Types of Termites in Arizona

Subterranean Termites

• Subterranean termites live in contact with soil where they get the moisture they need to survive. Commonly, they travel through tunnels they have constructed from soil, wood chips and fecal matter. These mud tunnels can be constructed vertically up to 60 feet, usually to access a food source. There may be one million termites in a subterranean colony.

Formosan Termites

• Formosan termites can live in colonies of more than 10 million individual insects and are considerably more aggressive than subterranean termites. Formosan termites are not so dependent on contact with the ground. They are more mobile and much stronger fliers than their subterranean cousins.

Drywood Termites

• Drywood termites are the slowest reproducers of the three termite types found in Arizona. Thus, they live in the smallest colonies, often no more than 3,000 individual members. Drywood termites extract all the moisture they need from the wood that forms the majority of their diet (they have a special chemical in their stomachs which maximizes liquid extraction) and thus are the most mobile type, being least dependant upon the soil for survival.

Problems

• Termites feed primarily on dead plant matter, such as leaf litter and wood. They can be problematic in causing structural damage to buildings, crops or deliberately planted forests. In buildings, termites will often get into the wooden support structure and, as a result of eating the wood, undermine the integrity of the building as a whole. Termites only require a space the width of a piece of normal office paper to get into a building, while Formosan termites can eat their way through sheet metal and PVC pipes.

Solutions

• As termites tend to remain inside wooden structures, they can be difficult to detect. Tapping the wood every few inches will enable you to hear if the wood is hollow, a common sign of termite infestation. Infestations can be dealt with in two ways. The first involves drilling holes into the infested structure and pumping in a liquid termiticide to kill the insects. The other involves placing an alternative food source nearby (some dead wood, for instance) which, once located by the colony as a source of food, will be replaced with a termiticide-laden bait.