Avaliação do uso dos termos sobre interações ecológicas no cupinzero

Abstract

Termites are insects that belong to the Isoptera infraorder, which has approximately 3,000 species currently described. Their nests are often invaded by other animals, which interact or not with their hosts. To designate these ecological relations, several terms and concepts are used. The term inquilinisme is commonly used and in general it approaches host-host relations, but in termitology this term is dismembered in thermitophile, termitariophile and inquiline. In this way, this work aims to understand the relationships of "inquilinisme" between species of termites and of other organisms, as reported in the scientific publications. A survey of the data using the term inquiline termite, termitophile, termitariophilous, and was performed in the Web of Science database. In order to verify if the authors follow the classification proposed by Kistner (1969), from each publication information was extracted as: termite constructor and inquiline, thermophilic, thermophilic, country and biome where the study was performed. In total, 233 publications with these terms were found, but only 164 publications were analyzed because of 69 articles that did not deal with termitology and related to other subjects. 56% of the published works were taxonomy. The Neotropical region had the largest number of publications, Brazil being the country with the highest number of studies. The Termitidae family was the most frequent as termite builder (81%) and the only family cited as Inquiline termite, which shows that there is probably a phylogenetic predisposition to inquilinisme. The thermophilic term was misused in 44% of the publications. This is due to the fact that many articles were not written by termitologists. The term thermophilic was mentioned three times and was used correctly.