Abstract
Termites cause a serious menace to wood structures all over the world. They rely mostly on the entozoic fauna for the digestion of cellulosic materials. The present study is based upon the diversity of flagellates protists isolated from the gut of a lower termite, Heterotermes indicola, belonging to three genera i.e. Holomastigotes (H. campanula, H. annandalei and H. metchnikowi), Holomastigotoides (H. hemigynum, H. hartmanni, H. kempi, H. koidzumi and H. metchnikowi) and Pseudotrichonympha (P. grassii). The largest and most abundant species Pseudotrichonympha grassii was identified by molecular studies using the SSU rRNA gene, confirmed by phylogenetic analysis and compared with that of the P. grassii isolates reported from other parts of the world. The results showed that the P. grassii observed in our study was phylogenetically most closely related to the Japanese P. grassii isolate. The biodiversity of the entozoic flagellates is important in targeting for biological control of termites as well as for isolation and culturing of flagellates to produce cellulases, an important industrial enzyme.