Subfamily Mirocapritermitinae · 瘤白蚁亚科

About the subfamily

The subfamily Mirocapritermitinae was established by Kemner in 1934 (Mirocapritermitinae Kemner, 1934), with the type genus Mirocapritermes Holmgren, 1914. This catalogue includes 14 genera and 135 species.

This subfamily has its centre of diversity in the Oriental realm, and most of its genera are restricted to the Oriental realm; the genus Pericapritermes is the most widely distributed, occurring outside the Oriental realm also in tropical Africa, the Australian realm and the southern margin of the Palaearctic (Japan, Korea).

Its diet is soil-feeding (humus-feeding) or feeding at the soil–wood interface, belonging to the typical soil-dwelling organic-matter-degrading group among the higher termites. In defence it is a typical asymmetrical-snapping group: the soldier head is rectangular, and the mandibles are generally asymmetric left and right (the left mandible is twisted in the middle and the right mandible is blade-like), the elastic energy stored when the mandibles are deformed being released to snap at high speed for defence; high-speed photographic studies of Pericapritermes nitobei (61) show that its asymmetric snapping mandibles exceed those of the symmetric snapping types in both strike speed and force, while in some species of the anterior-twisting termite genus the mandibles are nearly symmetric. The soldier head usually has no frontal projection dorsally, and the fontanelle is small and inconspicuous, the type genus Mirocapritermes being the exception in bearing a projection on the frons. In the worker–alate morph, the posterior margin of the second marginal tooth of the right mandible is concave and the molar area is smooth or only weakly sculptured; in the hindgut the two pairs of Malpighian tubules fuse proximally into groups, there is no Malpighian knot, and the enteric valve is composed of six rows of folds — common diagnostic characters of the worker hindgut in this subfamily. Economically, damage records are scattered: in oil-palm nurseries of Karnataka, India (62), Pericapritermes sp. damages the roots of bagged seedlings, causing stunted seedling growth.

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.