Abstract:  【Aim】 Escaping from danger is a great challenge for group-living animals. Termites are eusocial insects that live in high densities. Therefore, they may have evolved some unique strategies to collectively escape from dangers. 【Methods】 The escaping behaviors of Coptotermes formosanus workers in arenas with different shapes (round- and square-shaped arenas without an exit) were compared under laboratory conditions, and the evacuation efficiencies of C. formosanus workers escaped from round-shaped arenas (with an exit) and square-shaped arenas (with an exit on the corner or middle of the sidewall) were investigated. 【Results】 The disturbed workers of C. formosanus rapidly moved to the edge of round- and square-shaped arenas (without an exit) and ran along the wall. However, this wall-following behavior of C. formosanus workers caused jamming on the corners of square-shaped arenas, where significantly higher density but lower moving speed of worker termites were observed compared with non-corner areas. When an exit was provided, no jamming was observed around exits because escaping C. formosanus workers were dispersed along the wall. Interestingly, the evacuation time of C. formosanus workers was similar when compared between round-shaped arenas with an exit and square-shaped arenas with an exit on the corner. However, C. formosanus workers spent significantly more time in evacuating from square-shaped arenas with an exit located in the middle of the sidewall. 【Conclusion】 These results suggest that both arena shape and exit location affect the escaping behavior and evacuation efficiency of C. formosanus workers. In addition, termites adopt unique escaping strategies to avoid the “faster-is-slower” effects usually exhibit in other group-living animals (e.g., humans, and mice). Because worker termites are blind, understanding the escaping behaviors of termites may bring insight to improving evacuation efficiency for humans under poor-visibility conditions.

Key words: Termites; Coptotermes formosanus, eusocial insects, collective behavior; escaping behavior