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The rapid development of the Vietnamese coffee industry caused widespread deforestation, land degradation, desertification, and soil and water degradation in the late 1990s. However, little is known about the impact of intensification of coffee farming on arthropod diversity in Vietnamese coffee agroecosystems. We conducted an in-depth study of the termite presence in five land-uses along a gradient of increased land-use intensity in the Central Highlands of Vietnam: mixed deciduous forest (MF), secondary forest (SF), planted pine forest (PF), rubber plantation (RP), and coffee plantations (CP). The estimated number of termite species decreased along the land-use gradient. In coffee agroecosystems, the termite species richness was 20–50 % lower than that of the forested areas and monoculture rubber plantation. In terms of beta diversity, the termite faunal composition in CP was significantly separated from those of the other land-uses, in which the similarity was only 28.67 %. Litter depth, canopy cover, and wood basal area were positively associated with the termite communities present in MF and SF, whereas the termite community in PF was positively associated with soil bulk density, leaf litter, and understory vegetation. The ecological characteristics in RP and CP appeared to be negatively associated with wood basal area, leaf litter, and understory vegetation where well represented by Ancistrotermes pakistanicus (Ahmad). The sites also supported a few soil-feeding termites [e.g., Dicuspiditermes garthwaitei (Gardner), Pericapritermes latignathus (Holmgren), and Pseudocapritermes sinensis Ping and Xu in RP; only D. garthwaitei in CP].
