Fungus-farming termites can protect their crop by confining weeds with fungistatic soil boluses

The symbiotic agriculture of fungus-farming termites can collapse if they fail to prevent invading weeds. Previous studies suggest the role of symbiotic fungistatic microbes in bringing about weed control. However, how termites employ these microbes to suppress the fungal-weeds, without affecting the fungal-cultivar, remains unknown. Here we show that the fungus-farming termite, Odontotermes obesus, uses specific behaviors to remove, isolate and suppress the growth of the fungal weed Pseudoxylaria, by primarily encasing them with soil boluses containing fungistatic microbes. These behaviors efficiently suppress the weed without affecting the crop. This integration of specific behaviors with termite-derived microbes appears to be the proximate mechanism of how microbes are topically used by termites to confine the weed** while keeping the crop unaffected.