Termite Classification

Unranked:

Mastotermes

Pest status: the most destructive termite pest in Australia, estimated to cause more economic loss than any other insect species in the northern part of the continent (Hill, 1942). Can destroy: all kinds of timber, lead sheathing of electrical cables, bitumen, paper, bone, ivory (including billiard balls, Andersen & Jacklyn, 1993), horn, dung, leather, hides, ebonite, asbestos, jute, cotton and other vegetable fibre, silk, woolen fabrics, stored grass hay, sugar, bagged pickling salt, and flour (Hill, 1942; Hadlington, 1987; Andersen & Jacklyn, 1993).

Mastotermes

Mastotermes is endemic to Northern Australia, but has been introduced to Papua New Guinea, and apparently to Gebe Island, west of Halmahera in the north Moluccas (Watson & Abbey, 1993). Fossil species have been recorded from the Eocene, Miocene, and Oligocene in southern England (Jarzembowski, 1984), Continental Europe (Grasse, 1985), and Mexico (Krishna & Emerson, 1983).

Mastotermes

Mastotermes is considered to be the most phylogenetically basal (‘primitive’) of all termites (Kambhampati & Eggleton, 1999), and is placed in a family of its own (the Mastotermitidae, with a single extant species Mastotermes darwinensis), along with several fossil genera and species (see Grasse, 1985). DeSalle et al. (1992) claimed to have sequenced DNA from Mastotermes electrodominicus from 25-30 million year old amber, and thus place the extinct taxon phylogenetically in context with extant genera, but the validity of this is disputed (Austin et al., 1997).

Termites of the World

Mastotermes

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Mastotermes

Mastotermes

Mastotermes

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Termite Classification

Mastotermes