linguistic:translation
Life cycle

Termites are often compared with the social Hymenoptera (ants and various species of bees and wasps), but their differing evolutionary origins result in major differences in life cycle. In the eusocial Hymenoptera, the workers are exclusively female. Males (drones) are haploid and develop from unfertilised eggs, while females (both workers and the queen) are diploid and develop from fertilised eggs. In contrast, worker termites, which constitute the majority in a colony, are diploid individuals of both sexes and develop from fertilised eggs. Depending on species, male and female workers may have different roles in a termite colony.

The life cycle of a termite begins with an egg, but is different from that of a bee or ant in that it goes through a developmental process called incomplete metamorphosis, going through multiple gradual pre-adult molts that are highly developmentally plastic before becoming an adult. Unlike in other hemimetabolous insects, nymphs are more strictly defined in termites as immature young with visible wing buds, which often invariably go through a series of moults to become winged adults. Larvae, which are defined as early nymph instars with absent wing buds, exhibit the highest developmental potentiality and are able to molt into Alates, Soldiers, Neotenics, or Workers. Workers are believed to have evolved from larvae, sharing many similarities to the extent that workers can be regarded as "larval", in that both lack wings, eyes, and functional reproductive organs while maintaining varying levels of developmental flexibility, although usually to a much lesser extent in workers. The main distinction being that while larvae are wholly dependent on other nestmates to survive, workers are independent and are able to feed themselves and contribute to the colony. Workers remain wingless and across many taxa become developmentally arrested, appearing to not change into any other caste until death. In some basal taxa, there is no distinction, with the "workers" (pseudergates) essentially being late instar larvae that retain the ability to change into all other castes.

The development of larvae into adults can take months; the time period depends on food availability and nutrition, temperature, and the size of the colony. Since larvae and nymphs are unable to feed themselves, workers must feed them, but workers also take part in the social life of the colony and have certain other tasks to accomplish such as foraging, building or maintaining the nest or tending to the queen. Pheromones regulate the caste system in termite colonies, preventing all but a very few of the termites from becoming fertile queens.

Queens of the eusocial termite Reticulitermes speratus are capable of a long lifespan without sacrificing fecundity. These long-lived queens have a significantly lower level of oxidative damage, including oxidative DNA damage, than workers, soldiers and nymphs. The lower levels of damage appear to be due to increased catalase, an enzyme that protects against oxidative stress.