Dacetini, Myrmicinae, Formicidae, Hymenoptera, Insecta, Arthropoda, Animalia
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Additional images: worker, dorsal view (small, large).
Identification
Apical fork of mandible with no intercalary teeth; mandible with no preapical teeth; postpetiole small, its dorsum densely punctulate and opaque; setae on gaster flagelliform, bent, but relatively short and stout compared to elongata; propodeal spines relatively larger than elongata. See also Bolton (2000:511).
Head length 0.67mm, mandible length 0.40, CI 75, MI 60 (n=1).
Similar species: elongata, consanii, precava.
Range
Venezuela, Costa Rica. Costa Rica: Atlantic and southern Pacific wet forest around 500m elevation.
Natural History
Brown and Wilson (1959) summarize the genus as follows:
"Widespread in tropics and warm temperate areas. Primarily forest-dwelling; some species occur in grassland and arid scrub. ... Nests mostly in soil and rotting wood; a few species live in arboreal plant cavities in tropical rain forest. Foraging hypogaeic to epigaeic-arboreal. Food: most species are collembolan feeders; a few are polyphagous predators or occasionally feed on sugary substances..."
Members of the genus are all predaceous, with a kinetic mode of attack (Bolton 1999).
This species inhabits wet forest leaf litter. Lattke and Goitia (1997) discovered the species in 800m elevation cloud forest on the Paria Peninsula of Venezuela. They speculated that the species might be endemic to this cloud forest area, but its occurrence in mid-elevation wet forest sites in Costa Rica shows that it is more widespread than thought. Like so many leaf litter arthropods, its rarity may be due more to undersampling than to narrow endemism.
Selected Records
Winkler or Berlese samples from Turrialba, Hitoy Cerere, and Carara, all from about 500m elevation.
Original Description
Strumigenys pariensis Lattke and Goitia 1997:388-390, Figs. 28,39,45. Holotype worker: Venezuela, Sucre: Peninsula de Paria, Las Melenas, 9.7km N Irapa, 10deg41'N 62deg37'W, 800m (J. Lattke) [MIZA].
Literature Cited
Bolton, B. 1999. Ant genera of the tribe Dacetonini (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). J. Nat. Hist. 33:1639-1689.
Bolton, B. 2000. The ant tribe Dacetini, with a revision of the Strumigenys species of the Malagasy Region by Brian L. Fisher, and a revision of the Austral epopostrumiform genera by Steven O. Shattuck. Memoirs of the American Entomological Institute 65:1-1028.
Brown, W. L., Jr., and E. O. Wilson 1959. The evolution of the dacetine ants. Quarterly Review of Biology 34:278-294.
Lattke, J., and W. Goitia 1997. El genero Strumigenys (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) en Venezuela. Caldasia 19:367-396.
Page author:
John T. Longino, The Evergreen State College, Olympia WA 98505 USA.longinoj@evergreen.edu
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