Termite trait data from: Continental-scale shifts in termite diversity and nesting and feeding strategies

Typically, termites are treated as a single guild, which ignores important
internal diversity, including diverse feeding and nesting traits. These
termite traits are crucial for both ecosystem-level fluxes and trophic
webs, with implications for vertebrate species. Despite their ecological
importance, the large-scale distribution of termite feeding and nesting
traits and the relationship with termite diversity is largely unknown. We
investigated whether functional diversity, species richness, and feeding
(wood, litter, grass, dung) and nesting trait (aboveground mound,
belowground nest, inside tree or outside tree nest) distributions of
termites were climatically control. To address this gap, we assembled a
continental-scale database of termite traits and occurrence in Australia
and modelled termite nesting and feeding traits in response to
macroclimate. Functional richness and evenness increased primarily with
temperature. Australia showed multiple hotspots of termite diversity with
each hotspot showing a distinct guild composition. The large-scale
distribution of nesting traits showed that aboveground nesting species
were the most common nesting guild in the dry and wet tropics while
belowground nesting dominated in seasonally cold arid environments,
demonstrating a strong climatic control on nesting strategy. Given their
large biomass and many interactions with other species, the macro-ecology
of termite traits may be especially important in predicting shifts in
other species’ distributions at continental and global scales.