Cuticular hydrocarbons suggest three lineages in Reticulitermes (Isoptera: Rhinotermitidae) from North America.

Cuticular hydrocarbon mixtures can be used to discriminate insect taxa. They have utility for determining phylogenetic relationships where they are independent characters with discrete states and represent a hierarchical distribution of shared, derived characters. We report inferred degrees of relatedness among the chemical phenotypes of Reticulitermes from PAUP (phylogenetic analysis using parsimony) analyses of cuticular hydrocarbon characters. One hundred and forty-one Reticulitermes colonies collected from California, Georgia, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada were used. Initial maximum parsimony analyses sorted the 141 colonies into 26 chemical phenotypes. Subsequent analyses, using the ancestral species Coptotermes formosanus and Heterotermes sp. as outgroups, sorted Reticulitermes taxa into three major lineages, each characterized by a different set of dominant methyl-branched or unsaturated hydrocarbon components. Reticulitermes in lineage I have cuticular hydrocarbon mixtures with a preponderance of internally branched monomethylalkanes and 11,15-dimethylalkanes. Those in lineage II are defined by a preponderance of 5-methylalkanes and 5,17-dimethylalkanes. Taxa in lineage III are characterized by the predominance of olefins and a relative paucity of n-alkanes and methyl-branched alkanes. Bootstrap analyses and decay indices provided statistical support and robustness for these chemical-based relationships.