Check on this publication JOURNAL OF THE INDIAN ACADEMY OF WOOD SCIENCE

Volume 8, Number 2 (2011), 148-151, DOI: 10.1007/s13196-012-0028-9

An identification guide to the wood destroying termites of south India

You can also try to contact Dr. R. Sundararaj, Wood biodegradation division, Institute of wood science and Technology, P.O. Malleswaram, Bangalore 560003, India email: [email protected]

Only based on morphology, some of the fungus-growing termites species are rather dificult to discriminate. Molecular methods would give a higher level of certainty, and if you are interested on molecular identification I can give you further tools. Even though geographically restricted, you might want to check: "A guide to the termite genera of Southern Africa" from Vivienne Uys. Hope this helps.

In identifying termites, you can use the guide found on this link. www2.hawaii.edu/~entomol/pdf_files/hsp-1.pdf

Basically, the journal article was published by the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources (CTAHR). This journal states how some example of termites in Hawaii are identified. Some of the most common termites thriving in Hawaii would be the Formosan subterranean termites, the dry wood termite, and the damp wood termite. Respectively, the Formosan subterranean termites live primarily underground while the other two lives above ground level. Damp wood termites use the moisture around their surroundings, while the dry wood termites use water produced from the digestion of dry wood . Dry wood termite colonies typically produce kick out holes, from which fecal pellets are expelled. These pellets are called frass, are are similar in appearance when compared to fine grains of sand. Subterranean termites on the other hand do not make kick out holes. The presence of the mud tubes is one indicator. In identifying termites, as to compared to other species, the fecal product can be observed. (frass) Another factor that could be an identifying would be that of the appearance of antennae, wings, and waist. The link provides additional information of the termite castes that are available in hawaii, and this is can really be helpful and can become your references. :)

Hello Arun, you can look it up via this paper about A new genus and species of termites (Isoptera, Termitidae, Nasutitermitinae) from the rainforest of northern Peru. I hope that can be helpful.

http://www.pensoft.net/journals/zookeys/article/2311/

Dear Dr. Tânia Nobre please provide me the tools for molecular identification....

Thank you everybody for your valuable reply....Thanks a lot...

Dutta, you could use COI as a marker for theTermites and ITS+25S for the Termitomyces. It is widely used, provides a good discrimination power and there is a lot of data on the GenBank. The primers that I have used for amplification are described in the papers, but here is goes:

TL1862: 5'-TACTTCGTATTCGGAGCTTGA - 3' and

TH2877: 5'-TAGGTGTCGTGTAATACAATGTC - 3';

for the termites

and

ITS1FT: GTTTTCAACCACCTGTGCAC and

25S4R: ACAAGTGCTGAGTTCCTCAG)

for the Termitomyces (if you are interested on those as well).

The polymerase chain reaction conditions included a initial denaturing step of 10 min at 95 °C followed by 35 cycles (30 s at 95 °C, 30 s at 55 °C, and 30 s 72 °C) and finished by a final extension step at 72 °C of 5 min.

Hope this helps.