Tackling the caste problem: A new morphological tool for the termites (Isoptera) of the southeastern United States

Termites (Isoptera) are a group infamous for their billion-dollar annual economic impact in the United States. However, irrespective of the high relative concentration of ecologists in this country, the enormous functional significance of termites within soil and saproxylic communities has been essentially ignored. A major contributing factor is the inherent difficulty of taxonomic identification of these cryptic insects. The continued inability to accurately identify termite species using morphological characters of all castes has created a climate of controversy over papers published using existing morphological and biochemical characters. This has had the effect of crippling ecological research, and poses a vital problem for the pest control industry, where the specificity of control measures is critical to their success. Here, we provide a new morphologically-based taxonomic tool for identification of termites of the southeastern United States: a fully illustrated key to all castes, including immature forms, with complete and updated descriptions of all species covered.