One hundred million years ago, a termite got injured and opened its belly. The resin gradually encapsulates the body and the entire termite gut.
In Myanmar's Hukawng Valley region today, turpentine has fossilized and buried until humans excavate the amber mine. The resin leaks into the wound of the termite and preserves the microorganisms inside the termite gut. The bacteria here are the ancestors of living bacteria and help digest wood in the intestines of termites today.
According to one study, fossils are the first evidence to prove the relationship between an animal and its bacteria.
'The chances of meeting a termite with this kind of anatomy are very rare,' said George Poinar, an Amber expert at Oregon State University, who led the study in the latest issue of the paper. Parasites and Vectors. Amber has preserved bacteria well to every fine detail, including internal elements, such as cell nuclei.
'In some of these bacteria, you can actually see wood molecules,' Poinar told LiveScience reporter.
Wood is the food of the term - the terror of the owners of the houses and the companions of those who want to demolish the house. This insect cannot digest sugar in wood (cellulose) without the help of unicellular organisms. The term chews wood chips, swallowing them as small pellets. Then, the unicellular animals in the termite gut will break down these pellets. The rest of the digestive process is taken up by termites. Without unicellular organisms, termites will starve. Meanwhile, unicellular organisms will also die immediately if exposed to the environment outside the termite. This interdependent relationship is called 'the phenomenal phenomenon' by scientists .
Because termites and intestinal protozoans are separate animals, each new termite generation will have to agree with its wood-digesting microorganisms. To do so, the adult termite secretes a fluid containing single-celled organisms through the anal opening so that the new termites can lick the fluid.
Termites are related to cockroaches and are separated from cockroaches at the time of evolution at the same time the above termites are buried in amber.
'Strangely, DNA evidence shows that basically all termites are cockroaches,' Vernard Lewis, termite expert at the University of California at Berkeley, who has no relation to amber research, gives know.
Today's cockroaches also have intestinal bacteria, and perhaps the common ancestors of the two species, Lewis said. Bacteria in the gut have given this species a special advantage. To describe this advantage, Lewis sketched a ground painting of an ancient tropical forest filled with deep woody trunks.
'Think of a cockroach running around under 10 layers of leaf shards and ferns,' he said. 'How can we use bacteria to consume that leaf pile?'
Organisms allow the termites to digest more than they can eat into the mouth, and thus evolve successfully. Today, termites are everywhere with over 2300 species listed, and most concentrated in tropical climates.
'Books, wood and plants are living - that is the amazing food source of the term,' Poinar said. In forests, termites play an important role when crumbling and recycling dead plants, as well as improving soil fertility. We treat termites as vandals because they don't know how to distinguish between the wooden boards on the wall and the wooden animals lying in the forest.
'They just need to know wood is wood,' Poinar said.