Termitaradus is a small tropicopolitan

Cosmopolitan distribution

In biogeography, a taxon is said to have a cosmopolitan distribution if its range extends across all or most of the world in appropriate habitats. For instance, the killer whale has a cosmopolitan distribution, extending over most of the world's oceans. Other examples include humans, the lichen...

 genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 of true bugs

Hemiptera

Hemiptera is an order of insects most often known as the true bugs , comprising around 50,000–80,000 species of cicadas, aphids, planthoppers, leafhoppers, shield bugs, and others...

 placed in the family

Family (biology)

In biological classification, family is* a taxonomic rank. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, and species, with family fitting between order and genus. As for the other well-known ranks, there is the option of an immediately lower rank, indicated by the...

 Termitaphididae

Termitaphididae

Termitaphididae is a small tropicopolitan family of true bugs placed in the superfamily Aradoidea. Typically members of Termitaphididae are small, being an average of -, and flattened with laminae extending out from each body segment giving a round scale like appearance. Currently the family...

. As is typical for the family, living members of Termitaradus are small, being an average of 2 millimetre (0.078740157480315 in) to 4 millimetre (0.15748031496063 in), and flattened with laminae extending out from each body segment giving a round scale like appearance. The same is true for the extinct species with the exception of T. protera which reaches 7 millimetre (0.275590551181102 in) in length. All members of Termitaphididae are inquiline

Inquiline

In zoology, an inquiline is an animal that lives commensally in the nest, burrow, or dwelling place of an animal of another species. For example, some organisms such as insects may live in the homes of gophers and feed on debris, fungi, roots, etc...

s lodging in the nests of host species of termite

Termite

Termites are a group of eusocial insects that, until recently, were classified at the taxonomic rank of order Isoptera , but are now accepted as the epifamily Termitoidae, of the cockroach order Blattodea...

s, with Termitaradus species known only from the family Rhinotermitidae

Rhinotermitidae

Rhinotermitidae is a family of termites . They feed on wood and can cause extensive damage to buildings or other wooden structures. About 345 species are recognized, among these are severe pests like Coptotermes formosanus, Coptotermes gestroi and Reticulitermes flavipes....

. Though considered a separate family in Aradoidea it has been suggested by Drs David Grimaldi

David Grimaldi

David A. Grimaldi is an entomologist and Curator of Invertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He received his graduate training at Cornell University, where he earned his doctorate in Entomology in 1986. Dr. Grimaldi is an authority in many fields of insect...

 and Michael Engel

Michael S. Engel

Michael S. Engel is an American paleontologist and entomologist. He has undertaken field work in Central Asia, Asia Minor, and the Western Hemisphere, and published more than 300 papers in scientific journals. He was trained at the University of Kansas where in 1993 he received a B.S. in Cellular...

 in 2008 that Termataphididae may in fact be highly derived members of Aradidae

Aradidae

Aradidae bear the appropriate common name, flat bugs, in reference to their extremely flattened body. With few exceptions, the often cryptic insects are of no economic importance...

. The second genus placed in Termitaphididae, Termitaphis, contains the monotypic species Termitaphis circumvallata which inhabits nests of Termitidae

Termitidae

Termitidae is a family of termite, containing the following subfamilies:*Apicotermitinae Grassé & Noirot, 1955*Foraminitermitinae Holmgren, 1912*Macrotermitinae Kemner, 1934*Nasutitermitinae Hare, 1937*Sphaerotermitinae Engel & Krishna, 2004...

 species termintes in Colombia

Colombia

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

.

Species

The eight living species are found world wide in the tropical regions of Central and South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia while two extinct species are known from Miocene

Miocene

The Miocene is a geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about . The Miocene was named by Sir Charles Lyell. Its name comes from the Greek words and and means "less recent" because it has 18% fewer modern sea invertebrates than the Pliocene. The Miocene follows the Oligocene...

 Dominican amber

Dominican amber

Dominican amber is amber from the Dominican Republic. Resin from the extinct species Hymenaea protera is the source of Dominican amber and probably of most amber found in the tropics....

 and the third from Miocene Mexican amber.

• T. annandalei
• T. australiensis
• †
  Extinction
  In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms , normally a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point...
  
  T. avitinquilinus
• T. guianae
• T. jamaicensis
• T. mexicana
• †
  Extinction
  In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms , normally a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point...
  
  T. mitnicki
  Termitaradus mitnicki
  Termitaradus mitnicki is an extinct species of true bug in the family Termitaphididae known only from early Miocene Burdigalian stage Dominican amber deposits on the island of Hispaniola....
  
  
• T. panamensis
• †
  Extinction
  In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms , normally a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point...
  
  T. protera
• T. subafra
• T. trinidadensis