There are many exotic-looking species that you can immediately recognize. Guanacaste stick insects are easily spotted at night on low shrubs. And the number of spiders ornamented with showy colors is remarkable. Some even double themselves up at the base of leafstalks, so as to resemble flowerbuds, and thus deceive the insects on which they prey. The nests are built below ground, sometimes extending over an area of 200 square meters, with galleries to a depth of six meters.
Large nests provide a home for up to five million insects.
And only the queen, who may boast a thousand times the body weight of a minor worker, is fertile. They set off from their nests, day and night, in long columns to demolish trees, removing every shoot, leaf, and stem section by tiny section and transporting them back to their underground chambers. They don't eat this material. Instead, they chew it up to form a compost on which they cultivate a nutritional breadlike fungus whose tiny white fruiting bodies provide them with food. The species has evolved different physical castes, each specializing in its own social tasks.