Favoritos de alesbucek

I'm somewhat sure this is mysticum since queens were flying, but I'm having trouble distinguishing from M. rogeri. The clypeus looks round enough for mysticum...

Extracted from under the bark of a dead log. Log had been pointed out to me by Fielisy "Fidel" Bemaheva, who is an extremely knowledgeable old hand at Madagascar ants.

Caps 95 and 90 mm diameter; Heights 230 and 170 mm; on floor of very narrow erosion gully about 2.4 deep; mushrooms probably currently getting about 1.5 hours direct sun per day just before midday; black "sand" is Southern Harvester Termite (Microhodotermes viator) frass.

Termite frass observation: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/19880111

Are these mushrooms usually associated with these termites or their frass, or is this coincidence?

Tiny termites? Most of them are around 2-3 mm, some big ones are about 5 mm.

3rd and 5th pictures are closeup.

I found several large colonies on the bank of San Gabriel river, near Tejas camp. The weather is warm today, about 68 F when I found them.

I've never seen such strange looking termites before, very unusual.

Clung to the beak of a Whimbrel that was foraging in the seaweed, the bird could not dislodge it, after a couple of minutes the isopod dropped off. The Whimbrel continued to feed with the isopod on board.

Blackmound Termite

An attempt at rock science (sorry, you dont expect termites to get rocket science do you?). But constrained by a crack, the beasts have to construct runnels to get any food, which they do along the joints.

Notes:
the *dealated Queen will tip her abdomen up in the air and releases sex pheromone into the air to attract males (ie Kings). *dealated: divested of the wings - used of postnuptial adults of insects (as ants) that drop their wings after a nuptial flight