Vol. 39, pp. 1-6 February 23, 1926 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON ^fS'O'^.l'J^' RACES OR SUB-SPECIES IN RETICULITERMES. By THOS. E. SNYDER. Races or sub-species of the termites ReticuUtermes lucifugus Rossi a,nd flavipes KoUar have recently been discovered in France by Dr. J. Feytaud (1924) and in the United States by N. Banks and T. E. Snyder; they are not merely variants but have com-posite characters. While these two termites occur in both Europe and the United States, flavipes has a wider distribution in North America than in Europe, whereas lucifugus has a broad dispersal throughout Mediterranean Europe and North Africa, but in the United States occurs only near Boston, Mass. It is quite probable that lucifugus is native to Mediterranean Europe, from where (Italy) it was described in 1792 and was introduced to the United States in the vicinity of the Arnold Arboretum. The original habitat of flavipes, however, is not definitely known; it was described at a later date than was lucifugus, namely, in 1837, from the Imperial hothouses at Schonbrunn near Vienna, Austria. Dr. Feytaud kindly sent specimens of the variant occurring in France to Mr. Banks for comparison with flavipes; Feytaud notes in 1924 the differences between the typical lucifugus and this variant, presumably the termite, which under the name of lucifugus, caused great damage, between 1840 and 1850, in the villages of the Charente-Inferieure. To further summarize briefly the morphological differences, the sub-species now occurring in the Department of Charente-Inferieure, France, has a lighter colored head than the typical lucifugus (as has flavipes). The wings are less smoky, with costal area lighter colored, the tibiae are lighter colored and the ocellus is separated from the eye by a distance equal to the long diameter of an ocellus (not quite as far as in flavipes), 1— Proc. Biol. Soc. Wash., Vol. 39, 1926. (1)
BioStor
