Morphometric analysis of population samples of soldier caste of Odontotermes takensis Ahmad (Isoptera: Termitidae: Macrotermitinae)

In order to study morphometric variations in odontotermes takensis ahmad,soldiers from the samples collected by dr. muzaffar ahmad,professor emeritus,department of zoology,university of the punjab,lahore,were used. for each individual soldier,the following ten parameters were measured: i) length of head to side base of mandibles ii) width of head to side base of mandibles iii) width of head at the posterolateral ends of antennal carinae iv) maximum width of head v) length of left mandible vi) tooth of left mandible from tip vii) length of pronotum viii) width of pronotum ix) length of postmentum. x) width of postmentum. the mean values of different parameters of different population samples were compared with the help of student's't' test. in addition to this population samples for the species collected from geographic range of the species have been compared according to manhattan distance (mayer and ashlock,1991) to highlight similarities and differences of the population samples. specimens from locality 'a' (sarawak,bako) and 'e' (malaya,terenganu) are distantly related to specimens from other localities. copyright 2010 zoological society of pakistan.