Termite damage to buildings in the Province of CÓrdoba, Spain

In 1997 extensive and severe termite damage was reported in Palenciana, a small town in the Southwest of Cordoba. Following the inspection that showed nearly half of the buildings in the town were infested, we put forwardan control project taking into account the characteristics of Spanish urbanization and construction practice. The province of Cordoba is administratively divided into 74 towns plus the capital. The remaining towns were also surveyed for infestations in order to determine the impact of termites on the province. We have found termites in buildings in 66 (88%) towns. Although we did not find termites in 9 (12%) towns, this does not necessarily imply their absence there. The extent of the termite damage in each town varies. In 33 (45%) towns damage has been found in only a few houses but, one or more extended areas were affected in the rest. A more elaborate survey was done in Palenciana by using markrecapture methods to estimate foraging ranges and population sizes for some colonies. In Palenciana we have information from 350 of the approximately 640 houses, in which we found termite damage in 164. Because the affected area is clearly defined we have established a zone of 308 buildings (48.1% of the town), in which the damaged houses represent 53.2% of the zone but, we can anticipate that all will be eventually affected if no treatments are applied. Foraging territories of 6 colonies surveyed ranged from 50 to 2342 m 2 , with estimated populations of 157,846 to 5,200,000 termites per colony.