Research
The Mizumoto Lab studies how termite behavior is organized and how it has evolved. Termites offer unusual opportunities to connect mechanisms operating within individuals and pairs to colony-level construction, social organization, and long-term evolutionary change.
Our research is organized into three closely connected fundamental programs and one regionally focused program. Projects often cross these boundaries, combining natural history, experiments, computation, comparative analysis, and theory.
Evolution and mechanisms of mate pairing and coordinated motion
How do two animals coordinate movement while traveling together toward a shared goal? Termite tandem running provides a tractable system for studying leader-follower interactions, behavioral roles, communication, and decision-making. We investigate how pairs maintain coordinated motion, how movement rules respond to environmental and social information, and how these mechanisms differ among species.
Current work includes the diversity of tandem-running behavior across termite species, behavioral mechanisms for movement coordination, and comparative studies of coordinated movement in termites and other insects.
Major questions
- How do leaders and followers maintain coordinated motion?
- How are mating and search behavior organized in time and space?
- How and why have coordination rules diversified across species?
Evolutionary origin of collective nest building in termites
Termite nests emerge from the repeated actions of many individuals, yet the behavioral rules producing species-specific structures remain poorly understood. We combine comparative experiments, video analysis, field observations, and simulation to connect individual excavation behavior with colony-level tunnel and nest architecture in an evolutionary context.
A major current effort is an NSF-funded project comparing collective excavation and nest construction across termite lineages.
Major questions
- How and why do individual building behaviors vary among termite species?
- How do individual-level behaviors generate group-level construction patterns?
- How did collective building originate and diversify during termite evolution?
Evolution and diversity of termite sociality
Termite societies vary in nesting ecology, foraging behavior, developmental organization, colony life history, and the roles performed by workers and other colony members. We use phylogenetic comparative methods, global natural-history datasets, behavioral experiments, and theory to investigate how this diversity evolved.
Current research examines worker evolution, transitions in nesting and foraging, parental and helper behavior, colony foundation, and relationships between ecology and social organization.
Major questions
- How do nesting and foraging ecology shape social organization?
- Under what conditions do specialized workers evolve?
- How do life history, behavior, and colony structure evolve together?
Termite biodiversity in Alabama
Alabama has several termite species that differ in ecology, behavior, distribution, and economic importance. We are developing an Alabama Termite Identification Service and Distribution Mapping program to improve species identification, document regional diversity, and connect research with pest-management and extension needs.
Connecting the dots
The four programs address different biological scales but share a common goal: understanding the evolution of termite behavior and social organization. Mate pairing reveals how coordination emerges between individuals. Collective construction asks how repeated interactions scale up to self-organized structures. Research on termite sociality places these behaviors within broader ecological and evolutionary contexts. The Alabama biodiversity program grounds these global questions in local species while building resources for identification, monitoring, research, and pest management.
Many projects therefore span more than one program. A study of tunneling behavior may connect individual decision-making, collective patterns, and species-level evolutionary differences. A termite specimen collected in Alabama may contribute to identification, behavioral experiments, distribution mapping, and global comparative datasets.
We connect these questions through:
- Field natural history and specimen collection
- Behavioral experiments, video recording, and computational tracking
- Natural-history databases and biodiversity mapping
- Phylogenetic comparative analysis, mathematical modeling, and simulation
See Join the Lab for current opportunities.