I did not read through all of the 27 pages so far, but has anyone considered the shapes of the mound? It seems that they are almost always rectangular, and rarely U-shaped or round. Could there be some shapes that could exploit water, sun, wind, etc. even better? Especially when combining mounds in different shapes?
Just spitballing something below. Could put a shallow waterhole in the middle for insects, and the shape makes it easy to put several of them in a big clump of mounds.