Description
Data Records
The data in this occurrence resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 675 records.
This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.
Versions
The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.
How to cite
Researchers should cite this work as follows:
Duquesne E, Fournier D, Roisin Y, Gheyle E (2025). Termite (Blattodea) occurrences from Guadeloupe (2023) and in Costa Rica (2025). Version 1.0. Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB). Occurrence dataset. https://ipt.biodiversity.be/resource?r=termitesulb&v=1.0
Rights
Researchers should respect the following rights statement:
The publisher and rights holder of this work is Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB). To the extent possible under law, the publisher has waived all rights to these data and has dedicated them to the Public Domain (CC0 1.0). Users may copy, modify, distribute and use the work, including for commercial purposes, without restriction.
GBIF Registration
This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: a3db0be1-4b85-4c19-abb7-05503ee78090. Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by Belgian Biodiversity Platform.
Keywords
Occurrence; Termites; Costa Rica ; Guadeloupe ; Arthropods; Observation
Contacts
- Metadata Provider ●
- Originator ●
- Point Of Contact
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2105-9434
- Originator
- Originator
- Originator
- Publisher
Geographic Coverage
For both regions, five pairs (urban-forest) were selected all around, encompassing various types of environments (tropical and premontane rainforest, dry coastal forest). In Guadeloupe, pairs from Basse-Terre were located in Petit-Bourg, Sainte-Rose and Baie-Mahault while pairs from Grande-Terre were located in Le Moule and Sainte-Anne. In Costa-Rica, pairs were located in counties of Pococí, San Carlos, Pérez Zeledón, Siquirres and Talamanca.
| Bounding Coordinates | South West [9.341, -84.417], North East [16.329, -61.275] |
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Taxonomic Coverage
Termites (Blattodea).
| Kingdom | Animalia |
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| Phylum | Arthropoda |
| Class | Insecta |
| Order | Blattodea |
| Family | Rhinotermitidae, Psammotermitidae, Kalotermitidae, Termitidae, Heterotermitidae |
Temporal Coverage
| Start Date / End Date | 2023-04-27 / 2025-02-27 |
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Sampling Methods
Within each site (urban or forest), we drew two parallel transects separated by around 50 m following Jones & Eggleton (2000)’s protocol but slightly modified as recommended by Roisin & Leponce ( 2004). The transects were positioned using a compass, a GPS (Garmin GPSMAP® 67) and a decameter. Each transect had 25 quadrats (5 m2), each separated by 10 m center from center. Each quadrat was studied for around 30 min by two people looking at dead wood, nests, litters, trunks and six soil squares of 12 × 12 × 10. About a dozen individuals (soldiers and workers) from each found colony was then conserved in 100% ethanol for morphological and molecular analyses and/or in 80% ethanol for anatomical analyses. In total, 1000 quadrats were sampled over 2 years, or in other terms 500 quadrats per region (2 regions), or 100 quadrats per pair (10 pairs), or 50 quadrats per site (20 sites). Identification : Termites were first classified based on the workers and soldiers’ morphology before their genus was identified using Constantino (2002)’s key and a dissecting microscope (Leica MZ06). Different keys were then used to identify the species using the soldiers, depending on the genus and location. Soldierless species were identified using workers’ enteric valve through a microscope (Leitz LaborLux S) by comparing them to photographs from (Bourguignon, 2010; Bourguignon et al., 2013, 2016) and morphospecies from our lab. More difficult or unknown species were identified using sequencing (barcoding).
| Study Extent | The study took place in two different regions: an island in the West Indies (Guadeloupe) and a continental country in Central America (Costa Rica). Both samplings occurred during the dry season: in Guadeloupe from April to June 2023 and in Costa Rica from January to March 2025. Each region had 10 different sites (5 urban and 5 forest sites) with 5 different pairs (subregion). For each pair, the urban site was always distanced by 4.10 to 11.00 km from the forest site. Urban areas were selected based on availabilities of cities, closeness to forest patches and population similarities ranging roughly from 17,000 to 31,000 inhabitants for Guadeloupe and between 23,000 and 66,000 inhabitants for Costa Rica (City Populations, 2025). Urban sites were tiny city forests or wastelands with trees surrounded by houses, industrial areas, roads or any impermeable surfaces. For the forest sites, we tried to take the largest and most conserved fragments most of the time, although a few forest sites were small (but always > 1 km2) as no better options were found. For the forest sites, the sampling was always done at least 200 m away from the forest edge to avoid any edge effects (Duquesne et al., unpublished) while the transects in urban areas were usually done 5 m away from the edge. |
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Method step description:
- Termites sampling
- Termites identification
- Occurrences recording
Bibliographic Citations
- Bourguignon, T. (2010). Towards a revision of the Neotropical soldierless termites (Isoptera: Termitidae): redescription of the genus Anoplotermes and description of Longustitermes, gen. nov.*. Invertebrate Systematics 24, 357–370.
- Bourguignon, T., Scheffrahn, R. H., Nagy, Z. T., Sonet, G., Host, B., & Roisin, Y. (2016). Towards a revision of the Neotropical soldierless termites (Isoptera: Termitidae): redescription of the genus Grigiotermes Mathews and description of five new genera. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 176(1), 15–35. https://doi.org/10.1111/zoj.12305
- Bourguignon, T., Šobotník, J., Hanus, R., Krasulová, J., Vrkoslav, V., Cvačka, J., & Roisin, Y. (2013). Delineating species boundaries using an iterative taxonomic approach: The case of soldierless termites (Isoptera, Termitidae, Apicotermitinae). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 69. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2013.07.007
- City Populations. (2025). City Population—Population Statistics in Maps and Charts for Cities, Agglomerations and Administrative Divisions of all Countries of the World. https://www.citypopulation.de/
- Constantino, R. (2002). An illustrated key to Neotropical termite genera (Insecta: Isoptera) based primarily on soldiers. Zootaxa, 67(1), 1–40. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.67.1.1
- Duquesne, E., Dumortier, A., Babczenko, P., & Roisin, Y. (n.d.). Forest edge effects on termites in a neotropical rainforest. Unpublished.
- Jones, D. T., & Eggleton, P. (2000). Sampling termite assemblages in tropical forests: Testing a rapid biodiversity assessment protocol. Journal of Applied Ecology, 37(1), 191–203.
- Roisin, Y., & Leponce, M. (2004). Characterizing termite assemblages in fragmented forests: A test case in the Argentinian Chaco. Austral Ecology, 29(6), 637–646. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1442-9993.2004.01403.x
Additional Metadata
| Maintenance Description | Final dataset. Other initiatives will be published through other datasets. |
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| Alternative Identifiers | https://ipt.biodiversity.be/resource?r=termitesulb |