THE PHYLOGENY OF THE TERMITES. 



WILLIAM MORTON WHEELER. 



Among the changes that have been suggested within recent 

 years in the classification of the larger groups of insects, none are 

 more important than those affecting certain groups isolated by 

 Burmeister ('39) and Brauer ('85) under the designation Corro- 

 dentia from the miscellaneous complex variously known to the 

 older entomologists as Orthoptera, Neuroptera and Pseudoneu- 

 roptera. For Burmeister the Corrodentia embraced the Termi- 

 tidae ("white ants "), the Embiidae and the Psocidae ("book- 

 lice"). Brauer included under the Corrodentia the Termitidae, 

 the Psocidse and the Mallophaga ("bird-lice" ), but assigned the 

 Embiidae to the Orthoptera with a query. More recently some 

 authors have been inclined to combine the classifications of Bur- 

 meister and Brauer. Enderlein ('03), for example, divides the 

 order Corrodentia into three suborders, one comprising only the 

 Psocidae and called by him Copegnatha, another comprising the 

 Mallophaga, and a third (Isoptera), sharply separated from the 

 two others and comprising the Termitidae and the Embiidae. 



Borner ('04) has raised Enderlein's suborder Isoptera to ordi- 

 nal rank and thus removed the termites and Embiids from the 

 order Corrodentia, in which he leaves only the Psocidae and the 

 Mallophaga. 



Handlirsch, in two valuable and suggestive papers on the 

 classification of insects ('03 and '04), maintains that the Corro- 

 dentia (in the sense of Enderlein) must be resolved into four 

 different orders : the Isoptera, in Comstock's sense ('99, pp. 

 96 9/), 1 and including the termites only, the Psocidae, to which 

 Handlirsch limits the term Corrodentia, the Mallophaga (Nitsch) 

 and the Embiaria (Handlirsch). Far from regarding the Em- 

 biids as related to the termites, he places these groups in differ- 

 ent subclasses (Blattaeformia and Embioidea). Thus the old 



1 I infer from Hagen's monograph of the termites ('58), that the term Isoptera 

 goes back to Brulle and was by him used in the sense of Termitidre. If this is true 

 the term and conception should not be attributed to Comstock. 



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