Myrmicinae, Formicidae, Hymenoptera, Insecta, Arthropoda, Animalia
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Range
Costa Rica: Monteverde.
Identification
Antennae 12-segmented; petiolar peduncle longer than node; dorsal mesosomal profile long and flat, forming a single unbroken surface; color black.
Natural History
I know this species from one worker series from Monteverde. Steve Yanoviak and colleagues carried out a canopy fogging study in the Monteverde cloud forest, and Lisa Schonberg prepared and identified the ants. She discovered a long workers series of this species in samples from one of the fogged trees. The tree was a relict tree in a pasture at 1500m.
Comments
This species appears to be rare in Monteverde, given abundant collecting in the region. It is curiously similar to another Monteverde species, JTL-006, differing mainly in color. This species is black and JTL-006 is orange. JTL-006 is known from one worker collected at 1200m on the Bajo Tigre trail, just below the site where JTL-007 was collected.
This species appears most similar to T. fuscatus (Mann 1920), which is known only from the types [Macromischa (Macromischa) fuscata Mann 1920:420. Syntype worker: Guatemala, Antigua, December 1911 (W. M. Wheeler), ex hollow twig.]. It matches the figures and the key in Baroni-Urbani (1978).
Literature Cited
Baroni Urbani, C. 1978. Materiali per una revisione dei Leptothorax neotropicali appartenenti al sottogenere Macromischa Roger, n. comb. (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Entomologica Basiliensia 3:395-618.
Mann, W. M. 1920. Additions to the ant fauna of the West Indies and Central America. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 42:403-439.
Page author:
John T. Longino, The Evergreen State College, Olympia WA 98505 USA. longinoj@evergreen.edu
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