Preliminary Assessment of the Termite Distribution in Portugal

• Autor(a) principal: Nobre,Tânia
• Data de Publicação: 2001
• Outros Autores: Nunes,Lina
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0870-63522001000200009
• topic: modelling; logistic regression

Although extensive references can be found on the presence in the last 50 years of subterranean termites, particularly Reticulitermes lucifugus (Rossi), in Portugal, their exact distribution and importance have never been critically evaluated. Termites were found to be widespread in the country and are probably the most serious wood destroying insects in buildings. To provide a future working tool that would permit an evaluation of the probability of termite infestation within a given area, an attempt was made to model the probability of the presence of R. lucifugus to a set of environmental variables. Logistic regression was the chosen statistical method. Four variables were found to explain, in part, the distribution of the data. The overall effect of changes in environmental variables on the probability of termite occurrence is inferred from the model.