Cuticular Hydrocarbons as Chemotaxonomic Characters for Nasutitermes corniger (Motschulsky) and N. ephratae (Holmgren) (Isoptera: Termitidae)

Authors

Ralph W. Howard, Southern Forest Experiment Station, USDA, Forest Service, Gulfport, Mississippi
Barbara L. Thorne, Southern Forest Experiment Station, USDA, Forest Service, Gulfport, Mississippi
Sally C. Levings, Southern Forest Experiment Station, USDA, Forest Service, Gulfport, Mississippi
C. A. Mcdaniel, Southern Forest Experiment Station, USDA, Forest Service, Gulfport, Mississippi

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

1988

Comments

Published in Ann. Entomol. Soc. Am. 81(3): 395-399 (1988).

Abstract

Forty-four cuticular hydrocarbon components from workers of the termites Nasutitermes corniger (Motschulsky) and N. ephratae (Holmgren) from three localities in Panama were characterized by capillary gas chromatography-electron impact mass spectrometry. Both species contain qualitatively identical homologous series of n-alkanes; 2-, 3-, 11-,13-,14-, and 15-methylalkanes; 11,15-, 12,16-, and 13,17-dimethylalkanes; and 11,15,19- and 13, 17,21-trimethylalkanes. Both species also contain a single alkene, 9-hentriacontene. The two species, however, are readily distinguished chemically by differences among the relative abundances of 11 of their major hydrocarbon components.