1 Social Facilitation Attenuating Insecticide-Driven Stress in Termites

Group effect of social facilitation is expressed in a variety of ways in animals. Here we test the hypotheses that social facilitation may mitigate stress drastically higher than hunger – insecticide poisoning. When testing groups of termites varying from 1 to 14 individuals exposed to either of two insecticides, the cyclodiene endosulfan and the organophosphate chlorpyrifos, there were differences in the time to die among individuals from the different groups. Both experiments, each with one insecticide and a control treatment without insecticide exposure, showed that social facilitation extends survival time of insecticide-poisoned termites. The extended survival of poisoned in-sects was determined by the group size in which the termite was confined, which may have practical implications for current methods of termite control