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Stephen J. Martin noticed large mounds, some 10 feet tall, 30 feet wide, along the side of the road as he drove through a remote part of northeast Brazil.

“After 20 minutes, we were still driving through these, and I started saying, ‘Well, what are they?’” said Dr. Martin, an entomologist at the University of Salford in England who was in Brazil for research on the worldwide decline of honeybees .

He thought they might be piles of dirt displaced from the construction of the road. Instead, his companions told him, “Oh, they’re just termite mounds.”

Dr. Martin recalled his incredulous reply: “And I went, ‘You’re really sure about that?’ And they’re like, ‘Well, I don’t know. I think so.’”