Research on termites in urban areas: approaches and gaps

Termites comprise a large group of organisms in urban areas, and this leads us to believe that there is a comprehensive literature on the subject, sufficient for conducting a systematic review of the last years. Consequently, the aim of this study was a descriptive analysis of publications that addressed the issue of termites in urban areas between the years 1945 and 2018. For the systematic review, a literature search was initiated using the ISI Web of Science (WoS), SCOPUS (Elsevier) and SCIELO databases. In total, 180 relevant studies in the field concerning urban termites were published, out of which most (58.33%) investigated about the invasive termites, followed by studies that addressed the issue of control of pest termites (28.33%) and ecology and biodiversity (13.33%). The most studied species on the invasive termites’ category was Coptotermes formosanus, which was present in 22.78% of the publications. Studies on urban termites that highlighted the importance of the control of pest termites in urban areas began in 1983. Most of them were focussed on tests with chemical products. The most tested chemical probe in different termite species was hexaflumuron. Coptotermes formosanus was the most tested, followed by Reticulitermes flavipes. The publication of studies that focus on the ecology and biodiversity of urban termites began after 1958; they compared the diversity of termites in other locations within urban areas and is distributed in a small number of papers. Some gaps in studies that may serve as suggestions for future studies and, consequently, bring new contributions and advances in the scientific knowledge of urban termites were identified and discussed.

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Authors and Affiliations

1. Laboratório de Fitossanidade, Instituto de Pesquisas Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro, IPJBRJ, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil Marcus Nascimento Santos

1. Marcus Nascimento Santos

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. This research does not involve human and/or animal participants. The manuscript has not been submitted to more than one journal for simultaneous consideration. The manuscript has not been published previously (partly or in full). No data have been fabricated or manipulated (including images) to support our conclusions.

Supplementary Information

ESM 1

Electronic supplementary material

Supplementary Figure S1

Geographic locations (black triangle) of the studies (n = 180) included in the systematic review, which were explicitly specified in the publications about urban termites published in indexed journals between 1945 and 2018. Some studies have termites sampling in more than one country (see Supplement I)(842 kb)

Supplementary Figure S2

The proportion (%) of scientific articles about urban termites (n = 180) per country published in indexed journals between 1945 and 2018. *Studies with termites sampling in more than one country (see Supplement I) (44 kb)

Supplementary Figure S3

Number of scientific papers with the main theme being termites (columns) and the proportion of the number of scientific articles with the theme being urban termites (line) published in indexed journals worldwide between 1945 and 2018 (n = 2577) (37.6 kb)

Supplementary Figure S4

Accumulation curves of scientific articles with the main theme of termites (n = 2577) and those with the theme of urban termites (n = 180) published in indexed journals between 1945 and 2018 (72.1 kb)

Supplementary Figure S5

Accumulation curves (%) of scientific articles on urban termites (n = 180) addressed per subject category published in indexed journals between 1945 and 2018 (80 kb)