Conference Book of Abstracts - Taita Taveta University College

Klingner, DE (2000). The Role of Professional Associations in Strengthening the Professionalization of PublicAdministration. Congreso Internacional del CLAD sobre la Reforma del Estado y de la AdministraciónPública, Santo Domingo, Rep. Dominicana, 24 - 27 Oct. 2000Cryptic termite species diversity in Kakamega Forest, KenyaZipporah B. Osiemo 1, 2* , Andreas Marten 1 , Godfrey H. Kagezi 4 , Johanna P.E.C. Darlington 5 , Manfred Kaib 3 , LinusM . Gitonga 2 , Hamadi I. Boga 6 and Roland Brandl 11 Animal Ecology, Department of Animal Ecology, University of Marburg, Marburg, Germany.2 Department of Zoology, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture & Technology, Nairobi, Kenya.3 Department of Animal Physiology, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany.4 Kawanda Agricultural Research Institute, Kampala, Uganda.5 Zoology Department, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EJ, UK.6 Department of Botany, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture & Technology, Nairobi, Kenya.*Corresponding author zbisieri@yahoo.com or zlagat@jkuat.ac.keTermites are among the keystone species of tropical ecosystems and contribute to ecosystemprocesses and carbon and nitrogen cycles. The role of termites for soil processes dependsstrongly on the species composition and their feeding habits. Termite workers aremorphologically rather uniform, and thus exhibit only few traditional taxonomic characters forspecies identification and yet they dominate in ecological surveys. Therefore, the diversity oftermites is poorly understood, especially in tropical forests which are hotspots of biodiversity andthreatened by disturbances. Recently, the use of DNA-sequences (barcoding) has become moreimportant for inventory and biodiversity assessment of hyperdiverse taxa and those which aredifficult to identify. An approach towards establishing a DNA barcode library for termite speciesidentification and biodiversity assessment using sequences of the mitochondrial COII gene ispresented in this study. Kakamega forest is the remnant of the Congo-Guinean Forest reachingKenya. This isolated forest is a hotspot of biodiversity which is threatened by the increasinghuman population. Depending on the land use, along a gradient from primary rain forest tofarmlands, the species composition among the termites varied greatly, dominated by termitespecies feeding on wood in the primary forests and by grass feeding termites in farmlands.Hence, to interpret the role of termites in different land-use habitats, the species compositionneeds to be understood. Here we present termite biodiversity assessment using sequences of themtCOII gene. 854 sequences of a 681bp fragment of the COII gene of termites were extractedfrom GenBank and used to define molecular thresholds for termite species delimitation by usingmeans, medians and a threshold method.A threshold value of 0.058 K2P-sequence divergence per site was calculated for termite speciesdelimitation, using COII sequences of termites from GenBank. A family-specific threshold of0.056 was calculated to delimit the species for termites from Kakamega forest, all belonging tothe family Termitidae. Morphological assessment of 240 samples suggested that at least 16morphospecies occur along the gradient. A sequence-based analysis revealed existence of 22