白蚁是重要的生态系统工程师。然而,由于许多物种缺乏可靠的物种特异性形态特征,它们通常很难鉴定,这阻碍了生态研究。最近,与西非白蚁(西非白蚁分类学倡议)合作的白蚁学家召集了一个研讨会,目的是开始解决这个问题。最著名的西非白蚁分类学家反复测定相同的白蚁样本,发现了这个问题的巨大规模,因为只有不到10%的物种可以被明确地确定为物种水平。在研讨会结束时,深入的讨论和比较将识别成功率提高到约25%。然而,许多群体仍然存在问题,需要分子标记和条形码技术结合物种划界方法来帮助解决这些现有的分类学问题。根据本次研讨会的结果,我们建议采取协调一致的举措,在全球范围内解决白蚁分类学问题。我们相信,遵循类似结构化方法的区域分类学专门研讨会,重复测定相同的样品,将有助于克服白蚁分类学面临的困难。该计划还可以作为其他难以识别的分类学组的蓝图。
Termites are important ecosystem engineers. Yet they are often difficult to identify due to the lack of reliable species-specific morphological traits for many species, which hampers ecological research. Recently, termitologists working with West African termites (West African
Termite Taxonomy Initiative) convened for a workshop with the aim of beginning to address this problem. Repeated determination of the same
termite samples by the most renowned taxonomists for West African termites identified the huge scale of the problem, as less than 10% of all species could be unambiguously determined to the species level. Intensive discussions and comparisons increased the identification success to around 25% at the end of the workshop. Yet many groups remained problematic and molecular markers and barcoding techniques combined with species delimitation approaches will be needed to help resolve these existing taxonomic problems. Based on the outcome of this workshop, we propose concerted initiatives to address
termite taxonomy on a global scale. We are convinced that dedicated workshops on regional taxonomy that follow a similar structured approach, with repeated determination of the same sample, will help overcome the difficulties that
termite taxonomy faces. This initiative can also serve as a blueprint for other taxonomical groups that are difficult to identify.