The termites were traditionally placed in the Exopterygota, but such an indiscriminate treatment makes that group a paraphyletic grade of basal neopterans.

Its diet is varied, as it will eat introduced plants, damage ivory and leather, and wood and debris, in fact almost anything organic.

It becomes a major agricultural pest, to the extent that vegetable farming has been virtually abandoned in Northern Australia[4] wherever this termite is numerous, which it is outside of the rain forest or bauxite soils.

[5] It has developed the ability to bore up into a living tree and ring bark it such that it dies and becomes the center of a colony.

Mastotermes darwiniensis is the only known host of the symbiotic protozoan Mixotricha paradoxa, remarkable for its multiple bacterial symbionts.