Abstract

The comprehensive analysis of five identified and two unknown termite species with their binary scores of three markers viz., morphological, ISSR scoring and 28s rDNA sequence has been made to reveal in unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean (UPGMA) cluster that Trinervitermes biformis (Wasmann) is out grouped with 35.7% of dissimilarity with other species; Odontotermes obesus (Rambur) and Odontotermes redemanni (Wasmann) share same cluster with 32.7% of dissimilarity; similarly Odontotermes ceylonicus (Wasmann) and Odontotermes horni (Wasmann) share a maximum of 32.5% of dissimilarity. The UNKNOWN01 had more similarity with O. obesus (Rambur) and O. obesus (Rambur) in turn showed high similarity with that of O. redemanni (Wasmann). UNKNOWN02 was found along with O. ceylonicus (Wasmann) and O. horni (Wasmann). The study imparts cumulative or comprehensive analysis using different markers such as morphological, ISSR and nuclear genes like 28s rDNA that depict accurate measures of genetic diversity among different species of termites.

Key words: Termite diversity, Odontotermes, Trinervitermes, inter simple sequence repeat (ISSR), 28s rDNA, unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean (UPGMA), multiple sequence analysis.