Why a New Termite Treatment Works Even on Termites That Never Touch It

Western drywood termites spend their entire lives sealed inside the wood they infest, which makes their day-to-day behavior genuinely difficult to observe directly — there's no visible trail of mud tubes the way subterranean termites leave behind. Researchers at UC Riverside's entomology department, working under Dong-Hwan Choe, captured new photos and video footage of exactly that hidden behavior, documenting a feeding process called proctodeal trophallaxis that turns out to explain something practically useful about how termite treatments actually work.

The behavior: feeding through direct mouth-to-anus contact

Proctodeal trophallaxis is the transfer of liquid hindgut contents from one termite to another through direct mouth-to-anus contact. What gets passed along isn't just digested waste — it's a viscous liquid containing suspended fine particles of wood and, critically, the symbiotic microorganisms living in the donor termite's hindgut. Young larvae and individuals that have recently molted specifically depend on receiving this transfer from other colony members to be inoculated with those hindgut microorganisms, particularly certain flagellates, which they need in order to digest wood at all. Without it, a young termite can eat wood constantly and still be unable to process it.

Why that detail matters for how a treatment actually spreads

This is where the behavioral research connects directly to pest control. UC Riverside's lab has also been testing bistrifluron, a slow-acting insect growth regulator, against western drywood termites. In choice bioassays — where termites could choose between treated and untreated wood — a 0.1% concentration of bistrifluron produced roughly 95.7% mortality over 60 days; under continuous exposure to treated wood, mortality climbed to close to 99%. The reason a slow-acting compound like this can affect an entire colony, rather than just the individual termites that happen to feed directly on treated wood, comes back to trophallaxis: because termites are constantly sharing food and hindgut contents with each other as a normal, essential part of colony life, a compound absorbed by one feeding termite doesn't stay contained to that one individual.

Why "non-repellent" is the specific design choice that makes this work

A repellent chemical would cause termites to simply avoid treated wood once they detect it, which would undercut this entire mechanism before it even started. Bistrifluron's value is specifically that it's non-repellent and slow-acting — termites feed on treated wood normally, without being driven away from it, and carry the compound back into the colony through the same social-feeding behavior that keeps every member supplied with the gut microbes it depends on to survive. In effect, the treatment turns a termite colony's own structural weakness — total dependence on shared feeding for basic digestion — into the very pathway that lets a treatment reach individuals that never directly contacted it.

• Drywood termites live their entire life cycle inside infested wood, which is part of why they're harder to detect visually than subterranean termites that leave mud tubes behind.
• Food- and microbe-sharing behavior (trophallaxis) among termites means an effective treatment doesn't need to directly reach every individual termite in a colony to affect the colony as a whole.
• A non-repellent compound specifically preserves normal termite feeding behavior, which is what allows a treatment to spread through a colony's existing social structure.
• Research connecting termite biology to how a specific treatment actually spreads is a reminder that professional, species-appropriate treatment is built on more than just picking a strong-sounding chemical.

How a termite colony actually shares food and survives is exactly the kind of detail that separates an effective, colony-wide treatment from one that only knocks back what's visible. A free Sevacorp inspection can help identify what's actually present on a property before any treatment decision is made.

• Sources:
• UC Riverside Department of Entomology — "Research Unveils Secret Lives of Western Drywood Termites" — https://entomology.ucr.edu/news/2026/01/06/research-unveils-secret-lives-western-drywood-termites
• UC Riverside Urban Pest (Choe Laboratory) — "Secret lives of western drywood termites" — https://urbanpest.ucr.edu/research/secret-lives-western-drywood-termites
• Pest Control Technology (PCT) — "UC Riverside Finds Chemical That Halts Termite Exoskeleton Growth" — https://www.pctonline.com/news/uc-riverside-researchers-discover-new-chemical-to-revent-termites-new-exoskeleton/
• ScienceDaily — "New chemical kills 95% of termites without harming humans" — https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/05/260508211025.htm