Mastotermes
Encyclopedia
Mastotermes darwiniensis, common names Giant Northern Termite and Darwin Termite, is a termite
Termite
Termites are a group of eusocial insects that, until recently, were classified at the taxonomic rank of order Isoptera , but are now accepted as the epifamily Termitoidae, of the cockroach order Blattodea...

 species
Species
In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...

 found only in northern Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. It is a very peculiar animal, the most primitive termite alive. As such, it shows uncanny similarities to certain cockroach
Cockroach
Cockroaches are insects of the order Blattaria or Blattodea, of which about 30 species out of 4,500 total are associated with human habitations...

es, the termites' closest relatives. These similarities include the anal lobe of the wing and the laying of eggs in bunches, rather than singly. It is the only living member of its genus
Genus
In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 Mastotermes and its family
Family (biology)
In biological classification, family is* a taxonomic rank. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, and species, with family fitting between order and genus. As for the other well-known ranks, there is the option of an immediately lower rank, indicated by the...

 Mastotermitidae, though numerous fossil
Fossil
Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...

 taxa are known. The termites were traditionally placed in the Exopterygota
Exopterygota
The Exopterygota, also known as Hemipterodea, are a superorder of insects of the subclass Pterygota in the infraclass Neoptera, in which the young resemble adults but have externally-developing wings. They undergo a modest change between immature and adult, without going through a pupal stage...

, but such an indiscriminate treatment makes that group a paraphyletic grade of basal neoptera
Neoptera
Neoptera is a classification group that includes almost all the winged insects, specifically those that can flex their wings over their abdomens...

ns. Thus, the cockroaches, termites and their relatives are nowadays placed in a clade
Clade
A clade is a group consisting of a species and all its descendants. In the terms of biological systematics, a clade is a single "branch" on the "tree of life". The idea that such a "natural group" of organisms should be grouped together and given a taxonomic name is central to biological...

 called Dictyoptera
Dictyoptera
Dictyoptera includes three groups of polyneopterous insects - cockroaches , termites and mantids...

.

These singular termites appear at first glance like a cockroach's abdomen stuck to a termite's fore part. Their wings have the same design as those of the roaches, and its eggs are laid in a case as are roach eggs. It is thought to have evolved from the same ancestors as the wood roaches (Cryptocercus
Cryptocercus
Cryptocercus is a genus of Dictyoptera in the family Polyphagidae, of which this genus is the only member. Species are known as wood roaches or brown-hooded cockroaches....

) in the Permian
Permian
The PermianThe term "Permian" was introduced into geology in 1841 by Sir Sir R. I. Murchison, president of the Geological Society of London, who identified typical strata in extensive Russian explorations undertaken with Edouard de Verneuil; Murchison asserted in 1841 that he named his "Permian...

. Fossil wings have been discovered in the Permian of Kansas which have a close resemblance to wings of Mastotermes of the Mastotermitidae, which is the most primitive living termite. This fossil is called Pycnoblattina. It folded its wings in a convex pattern between segments 1a and 2a. Mastotermes is the only living insect that does the same. Unlike roaches not all termites have wings: Only the reproductives, (see Termites-life cycle) whose wings are considerably longer than their abdomen. Mastotermes darwiniensis is usually not very numerous, nor are the colonies large when left to natural conditions. However, when given abundant water(such as regular irrigation) and favourable food & soil conditions (such as stored timber or timber structures), populations can be enormous, numbering in the millions, quickly destroying their host. Its diet is varied, as it will eat introduced plants, damage ivory and leather, and wood and debris, in fact almost anything organic. It becomes a major agricultural pest, to the extent that vegetable farming has been virtually abandoned in Northern Australia wherever this termite is numerous, which it is outside of the rain forest or bauxite soils. It has developed the ability to bore up into a living tree and ring bark it such that it dies and becomes the center of a colony.

Mastotermes darwiniensis is the only known host of the symbiotic protozoan Mixotricha paradoxa
Mixotricha paradoxa
Mixotricha paradoxa is a species of protozoan that lives inside the termite species Mastotermes darwiniensis and has multiple bacterial symbionts. The name, given by the Australian biologist J.L. Sutherland, who first described Mixotricha in 1933,. means “the paradoxical being with mixed-up...

, remarkable for its multiple bacterial symbionts.

Fossil record

There have been numerous fossil
Fossil
Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...

 taxa described in the Mastotermitidae as well as in the genus Mastotermes. The family seems to have had a worldwide distribution until just a few million years ago, when all but the ancestors of the Giant Northern Termite became extinct for unknown reasons.

Prehistoric Mastotermitidae genera are:
  • Blattotermes
  • Miotermes
  • Spargotermes (Miocene-Pliocene of Brazil)

and perhaps the above-mentioned Pycnoblattina, which seems to be exactly halfway between the most primitive termites and their cockroach relatives and could be arguably placed in either group.

Fossil species of Mastotermes are:
  • Mastotermes sarthensis (Cretaceous of France)
  • Mastotermes bournemouthensis (Late Eocene of England)
  • Mastotermes gallica (Early Oligocene of France)
  • Mastotermes anglicus (Middle Oligocene of England)
  • Mastotermes electromexicus (Late Oligocene amber of Chiapas, Mexico)
  • Mastotermes heerii (Late Oligocene of Poland) - tentatively placed in Mastotermes
  • Mastotermes picardi (Late Oligocene of France)
  • Mastotermes croaticus (Early Miocene of Croatia)
  • Mastotermes electrodominicus (Early Miocene of the Dominican Republic)
  • Mastotermes haidingeri (Early Miocene of Croatia)
  • Mastotermes minor (Early Miocene of Croatia)
  • Mastotermites stuttgartensis (Middle Miocene of Germany) - tentatively placed in Mastotermes
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