Woody plant material is a challenging dietary resource for animals, as plants contain recalcitrant polymers including cellulose, hemicelluloses and lignins . Employing a wood-based dietary strategy with its low nutritional quality and lack of nitrogenous compounds, xylivores must either rely on the activities of endosymbiotic microbes or produce the essential cellulose and lignin degrading enzymes. Some wood eating animals such as cockroaches and longicorn beetles have gut structures that imply cellulose digestion is primarily accomplished by endogenous cellulases rather than microbial cellulases . In contrast, the termite gut requires a greater contribution from microbial cellulose digestion , which works synergistically with endogenous cellulases to enable them to degrade 74–99% of cellulose and 65–87% hemicellulose ,. A complex resident microbiota inhabits the digestive system of the bovine rumen, which converts cellulose-rich plant mass into volatile fatty acids that are subsequently absorbed by the rumen epithelium. Additional compounds such as amino acids and vitamins B and C, are also supplied to the host ,.