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The genus Dolichoderus contains the largest members of the subfamily Dolichoderinae. All the species are in the size range of the formicine genus Camponotus (carpenter ants), and in the field workers are superficially similar to Camponotus. There are 11 species known from Costa Rica, with a wide range of morphologies and behaviors. In the past the Costa Rican species have been placed in the genera Monacis and Hypoclinea, but these are currently synonyms of Dolichoderus (Shattuck 1992).
Mackay (1993) revised the New World species, providing keys to all castes, distribution maps, and species accounts. He has made the content of this work electronically available and I have relied heavily on it to produce this website. In the species accounts, the range data come mainly from MacKay's work and I have copied the entire natural history sections for each Costa Rican species. To these I have appended additional observations and information specific to Costa Rica.
I have posted here the literature cited section of MacKay's revision, using Microsoft Word to translate to html, and I have made no attempt to assure that special characters are displaying correctly. The main purpose is to allow users to look up a reference that appears in the portions of the species accounts that have been copied directly from MacKay's work.
Literature Cited from MacKay 1993.
Literature Cited
MacKay, W. P. 1993. A review of the New World ants of the genus Dolichoderus (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Sociobiology 22:1-148.
Shattuck, S. O. 1992. Generic revision of the ant subfamily Dolichoderinae (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Sociobiology 21:1-181.
Page author:
John T. Longino, The Evergreen State College, Olympia WA 98505 USA.longinoj@evergreen.edu
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