Abstract
Ants and termites form an important component of the soil fauna of scrub-savannah in Northern Nigeria. The seed gatherer (harvester ant) Messor galla (Mayr) and honeydew ant Camponotus maculatus (Fabricus) are among the commoner species of ants to be found in such areas. The commonest termites include the grass cutter Trinervitermes geminatus (Wassman) and the tree climber Odontotermes magdalenae (Grasse). The need to understand the ecology of these social insects is essential, in view of their potential competitive interactions with man through a common requirement for grains and grassland. As a contribution to the chemical ecology of the social insects of tropical grassland we report here the chemical analyses of volatile secretions from Dufour’s glands in M. galla and C. maculatus, from the frontal gland in T. geminatus, and from the salivary gland in O. magdalenae.
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Olagbemiro, T.O., Sani, K.M., Staddon, B.W. (1990). A Note on Volatiles from Exocrine Glands of Some Grassland Ants and Termites from Tropical West Africa. In: McCaffery, A.R., Wilson, I.D. (eds) Chromatography and Isolation of Insect Hormones and Pheromones. Chromatographic Society Symposium Series. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-8062-7_34
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