Subfamily Engelitermitinae · 恩格尔白蚁亚科

About the subfamily

The subfamily Engelitermitinae was established by Romero-Arias, Roisin and Scheffrahn in 2024 (52), with the type genus Engelitermes and the type species E. zambo; the genus name honours the termite taxonomist Michael S. Engel. This catalogue includes 1 genera and 1 species.

Because it contains a single genus with a single species, its characters are those of the subfamily: the type colony (52) was collected in lowland tropical rainforest along the Nyong River in southern Cameroon, where it lived in a cavity of about 50 × 60 cm between the bark and a standing dead tree, constructing the nest chamber of soft black faecal material; the colony numbered more than ten thousand individuals, but soldiers were extremely scarce — in two of the four known samples only workers were collected. The worker mandibles are of the soil-feeding (humus-feeding) type, and the enteric-valve pads bear only a single spine with an unsculptured cuticle, a combination unique among termites; soldiers are rare, with a transparent abdomen containing no solid food, the head yellow-orange and rectangular, the mandibles short and stout, each bearing a triangular tooth near the base, and the tibial spur formula 2:2:2. Alates have not yet been collected. The subfamily is known from only four collecting localities, and its discovery shows that distinctive deep lineages of the family remain to be discovered in African tropical rainforests.

This section is the standing account the site maintains for this rank and is updated on this page as the classification is revised; the checklist index is in the Checklist.