When he graduated from high school in California, Ken Grace worked in termite control for a short time before college. His fascination with insects stayed with him, and he moved on to graduate school in entomology.

One of his professors at the University of California at Berkeley told him, ‘‘You know, you never should have gotten away from termites. There’s a lot of good research waiting to be done.’’ Grace returned to the topic and ended up doing his doctoral thesis on the behavior of the western subterranean termite.

Today, Grace is the University of Hawaii’s point man on termite research, a key job in a state where six species of non-native termites are causing major damage. In the lab and at a half-dozen field sites around Honolulu, he tests baits and other new control methods, evaluates how termites react to chemical wood treatments and analyzes the insects’ genetics and behavior.

Grace also is working on Operation Full Stop, the federal Formosan termite program. He’s helping to oversee monitoring in the French Quarter and Armstrong Park, trying to get data that will give a picture of the overall Formosan termite populations.

To keep his lab supplied with termites, Grace set up a 100-foot-long line of traps behind his building at the university.

Curious about what was going on underground, he dyed and released termites at one end of the line of traps. At first, the dyed termites remained at that end, indicating that they came from a different colony than the termites in the other traps. Later, however, the dyed termites began showing up in more and more traps.

‘‘We believe one colony absorbed or merged with another,’’ he said. If Formosan colonies are indeed able to join forces, then that could be another explanation for their growth and resilience.

Grace has been trying to pin down how termites are able to recognize nestmates and know when to fight intruders. Termites secrete chemicals to maintain waterproofing. Grace and his graduate students have been analyzing those chemicals to see if they might be the key to recognition and fighting.