Talk:Macrotermitinae

A fact from Macrotermitinae appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 4 April 2017 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that termites developed agriculture some 31 million years ago?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2017/April. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Macrotermitinae.

Wikipedia

My calculations! (you REALLY want to read this!)

So macrotermes B. individuals are 1.4 inches (4.2 divided by 3 = 1.4) so (based on that most termite colonies have about 1 billion sterile members)if you lined up each termite single file the line would be 166,666.6 feet (yes that's more then a million feet) worth of termites!!!Garden eel (talk) 09:43, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

While you are abosultely right that no macrotermites are that big, the number 1 billion is equally wrong. They would top out at around 2 million for the really large colonies would be my guess. There are plenty of reserach papers available, though I do not have access here. The length of a macrotermitae worker is rather in the range of 5mm. 14.139.158.9 (talk) 05:27, 17 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]