A new record of Reticulitermes kanmonensis Takematsu, 1999 (Isoptera: Rhinotermitidae) from Korea

• Reticulitermes kanmonensis Takematsu, 1999 was confirmed for the first time in Korea.
• R. kanmonensis has more hairs on pronotum and a concave posterior margin of postmentum.
• Clear genetic differences in COI and COII existed between R. kanmonensis and R. speratus kyushuensis.

In this study, we report the first record of Reticulitermes kanmonensis from Korea verified using soldier morphological characters and haplotypes obtained from two mitochondrial genes. R. kanmonensis Takematsu, 1999 (Isoptera: Rhinotermitidae) was collected from Pinus densiflora Siebold & Zucc. (Pinaceae) stumps in two provinces, Jeollabuk-do and Chungcheongnam-do, Korea. We compared R. kanmonensis with the more common Reticulitermes speratus kyushuensis Morimoto, 1968 using morphological and molecular characters. In the morphological comparison, R. kanmonensis was distinguished from R. speratus kyushuensis by a significantly higher number of hairs on the pronotum and ratio of the posterior postmentum width and length. In the molecular comparison, R. kanmonensis revealed genetic differences of 5.49% (range 5.20%–5.80%) and 8.11% (range 8.00%–8.80%) from R. speratus kyushuensis using the cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) and subunit II (COII) gene sequences, respectively.

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