Multidiscipline Approach for Studying the Climate and Molecular Phylogeographic Analysis of Termites

Amgad ELMAHDI, CSIRO LAND AND WATER
Haidi Badawi, 1Biological Sciences, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide, SA 5001, Australia

Abstract

ABSTRACT

Global warming issue and increasing vulnerability of biodiversity are the main issues facing the world and particularly Australia. Australia has a rich fauna of termites mainly in mainland areas. Termites are primarily tropical and subtropical insects, and play an important role as an ‘ecosystem engineers’ because of their ability to decompose wood material. They have major effects as nutrients recyclers, and in influencing energy flow. In recent times there are few study attempted to identify and establish the link between termites’ distribution (phylogeographgy), invasions and climate; and how this distribution might change with global warming and changes in drought frequency.

Australia is facing sever drying conditions and reduced rainfall and precipitation which in turn reduced soil moisture and changed soil physical characteristics. Hence, this study attempts to study the link between termites phylogenography and climatic conditions by applying molecular DNA bar-coding analysis for termites species from different climatic zones and states to develop a multidisciplinary integrated distributional model for Australian termite fauna and biodiversity in consideration of several factors such as vegetation type, ecosystem nature, temperature average, average rainfall, evaporation rate and soil type. Preliminary results show there is a clear tradeoff between climate conditions and termite’s distribution and biodiversity, the most sensitive parameters are rainfall, soil moisture, precipitation and temperature.