关键词: 白蚁, 病原微生物, 免疫, 侵染, 行为, 抗菌肽

Abstract: As one group of old social insects, termites face serious threats from a variety of potential entomopathogenic microbes during their long life history. This article gives a brief review of the mechanisms by which termites resist the infection and spreading of entomopathogenic microbes in terms of physiological immunization and social behaviors, such as cellular and humoral immune responses as well as other altruistical behaviors like allogrooming, so as to provide necessary information for the studies on termite immunity strategies. At present, several antimicrobial compounds have been identified from cephalic gland and sternal gland secretions of termites. Several antimicrobial peptides such as termicin and spinigerin and antimicrobial proteins like transferrin and lysozymes as well as the social behaviors including allogrooming and trophallaxis turn out to play important roles in protecting termites from being infected by entomopathogenic microbes. Researchers have clarified preliminarily the physicochemical properties of antimicrobial peptides and confirmed that controlling termites with entomopathogenic microbes by means of RNA interference and other molecular biological methods is feasible and promising. However, it needs further study to clarify the evolution of antimicrobial peptides, the interactions between various antimicrobial peptides and proteins as well as the interactions between physiological immunity strategies and intra-colonial social behaviors.

Key words: Termite, entomopathogenic microbes, immunization, infection, behavior, antimicrobial peptide