The islands of Andaman and Nicobar situated in the Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean, with its characteristic physiography, climate, vegetation, etc., offer an ideal condition to support fairly rich termite fauna. But, the real faunal magnitude in these insular areas is known far less than our expectation. Whatever fauna known, is mainly based on collections made by the non-specialists. Many gaps in our knowledge still exist due to manifold reasons. Uptil now, no serious attempt has been made to explore these insects even in the accessible islands. The lack of communication, difficult terrain, impenetrable forest, etc., posed problems in negotiating the entire insular chain in the past, which are becoming easier now-a-days with the steady progress of the overall development of the area. Keeping this in view, an attempt has been made to explore the termite fauna of the Bay Islands thoroughly under a special D.S.T. Project entitled "Investigation on the ecological interaction and economic status of the xylophagous insects of the islands of Andaman and Nicobar" under the supervision of the senior author during the period 1978-81. Prior to this, several survey trips had also been conducted to study and collect these insects particularly from the South Andamans and Great Nicobar. The present monograph is mainly based on the collections contained in more than 700 vials collected from numerous new localities during the period from 1975-1982. It deals with 38 species of termites from the area with regard to their taxonomic status, list of synonymy, measurements, distributional records, taxonomic remarks, etc. Out of 38 species, some 14 species are new addition to the fauna, of which nine species are new to science. Five known species are morphologically defined in considering their poor morphological description. Taxonomic key has been formulated for easy recognition of different taxa. A brief zoogeographical analysis has also been incorporated in the monograph to understand the faunal composition and their affinities with the fauna of the adjoining land masses of the oriental region.
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