Serritermes serrifer Hagen & Bates, 1858 锯齿白蚁

Morphology

The description below is paraphrased from the original or a later revision, by caste; the source is cited at the end.

Diagnostic characters

This genus is the monotypic genus of the Serritermitidae, and its generic characters are the same as those of the family: in the alate, worker and nymph the apical tooth of the mandibles is proportionally elongate and acute, separated from a single marginal tooth near the ridged molar plate by a broad, curved inner margin, and the family is thereby distinguished from all other termite families; in the soldier the distal portion of both mandibles is long and relatively straight, and the inner margin behind the apex bears numerous coarse serrations; the pronotum is narrow and elongate, with both anterior and posterior margins distinctly bilobed and a deep notch in the centre of each.

Alate

The head is oval, mid light brown to yellow; the fontanelle lies in a small depression, white, of medium size, reduced and bifurcate; the compound eyes are medium-sized and circular, about one quarter of their diameter from the lower margin of the head; the ocelli lie between the compound eyes and the frons and are smaller than the compound eyes; there are 13 or 14 antennal segments; the postclypeus is large, its length slightly less than half its width, with a median longitudinal line; the pronotum is about half as long as wide, its anterior margin slightly concave and its lateral margins rounded and then narrowed posteriorly; each tibia bears 2 apical spurs; the tarsi are 4-segmented; there is no arolium; the cerci are 2-segmented; neither sex has styli.

Soldier

The sides of the head are nearly straight and narrow anteriorly, and the head is wider than long (to the postclypeus); the outer margin of the mandibles is concave at the base, nearly straight in the middle and convex towards the apex; the apices of both mandibles are scarcely hooked, and the inner margin of the distal 1/3 bears numerous coarse serrations, with no molar ridges at the base; on the left mandible the serrations extend almost to the base, and before the base there is a blunt swelling and a small tooth-like projection of about 60°; on the right mandible about 6 smaller serrations follow the 3–4 coarse distal ones; the postclypeus is short with a concave anterior margin; the labrum is longer than wide with a bluntly pointed apex; the pronotum is elongate, its anterior and posterior margins deeply notched into two lobes; each tibia bears 2 apical spurs; the tarsi are 4-segmented, the fourth longer than the rest together; there are no styli; the cerci are 2-segmented.

Worker

There are 13 antennal segments; the mandibles are the most specialised known among termites, with the distal portion proportionally elongate and acute and the marginal teeth reduced to a single one.

This genus is monotypic, containing only this species; the following is the genus-level description based on the original literature; species-level measurements and intraspecific variation are given in the original.