[2] Colonies will readily occupy and infest decomposing wood but primarily live in a complex subterranean network of tunnels and galleries which they use to travel to new food sites.

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, damaged ivory and leather, and wood and debris, and in fact almost anything organic.

It becomes a major agricultural pest, to the extent that vegetable farming has been virtually abandoned in Northern Australia[7] wherever this termite is numerous, which it is outside of the rain forest or bauxite soils.

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