Protozoan from termite gut. As members of the food chain, linking the plants to the insectivores in the ecosystem. Echidnas are especially adapted to eating termites and ants. Other animals such as lizards and birds will eat termites, especially when the winged male and female termite adults are full of fat, an energy store to tide them over until they can establish their new colony. This fat makes them a particularly valuable food supply for insectivores.
Worker termites out foraging in the leaf litter are also a useful food source for insectivores.
As a producer of nests sites for birds and animals both directly and indirectly. Two of the rarer species of parrot nest in ground termite mounds. Termites hollow eat out the centres of trunks and limbs of living trees. These tree hollows are a critical and, with the excessive clearing of old trees, often limiting factor in the population level of hole nesting birds and animals. The nesting hollows are one of the factors that makes old growth forest especially valuable as habitat.