They are most destructive in wooden homes,[1] and are agricultural pests in the tropics and subtropics of Africa and Asia.

[1] The queen lives in a clay cell in the midst of the fungal garden at the center of the hive.

The African species have a single soldier caste, unlike the related genus Macrotermes.

Alarmed soldier termites of Odontotermes badius Haviland 1898 expel an odoriferous brown defensive secretion between their mandibles that becomes sticky and rubbery on exposure to air.

The fungus is cultivated on a substrate of wood, bark, leaf litter, dry dung, and dead grass.