Dolichoderinae, Formicidae, Hymenoptera, Insecta, Arthropoda, Animalia
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Above images of specimen from Costa Rica, courtesy of AntWeb.
Additional image: line drawing of worker mesosoma, from Wild (2007) (click here).
Range
Northern Mexico to Panama, with an isolated population above 2400 meters in the Cordillera Central of Hispaniola.
Identification
Cephalic dorsum with 6 or fewer erect setae (often lacking entirely); mesonotum with a slight medial impression; mesopleura and metapleura smooth and shining, with pubescence sparse to absent; medium brown to piceous in color.
Natural History
From Wild 2007:
Linepithema dispertitum is primarily a montane forest ant but has been recorded across a broad range of habitats. This species has been collected from 130 to over 3,000 meters in elevation, with more than 90% of records across the range of L. dispertitum being from above 1,000 meters. Where habitat information has been recorded, 15 collections are from montane pine forest, five from montane rain forest, three from oak woodland, two from coffee plantations, and one each from tropical dry forest and rainforest.
Unlike the largely arboreal and closely related L. iniquum, L. dispertitum is more frequently found nesting in soil or rotting wood. 28 nest records are from under stones, nine are from rotting wood, eight are from orchids, two are from moss on a tree trunk, and one is from under bark. Several of the orchid records were overland port-of-entry intercepts of full colonies with dealate queens into the United States from southern Mexico, suggesting the potential of this species to spread beyond its native range. Alate males have been recorded in April and June in Veracruz, Mexico, in November in Guatemala, in January in El Salvador, and in July and September in the Dominican Republic.
Linepithema dispertitum is probably monogynous in some populations. Of ten nest excavations that I conducted in Guatemala and in the Dominican Republic, four nests contained a single dealate queen, and the remainder uncovered no queens. Molecular genetic data will be needed to confirm monogyny, and given the extensive interpopulation variation in male morphology it is possible that mating system and colony structure vary correspondingly.
I observed Pseudacteon sp. phorid flies attacking L. dispertitum at nest excavations in Baja Verapaz and Solol‡, Guatemala. The flies appeared within a few minutes as I broke into the ant nests. Voucher specimens of the phorids were identified by Brian Brown and have been deposited at LACM.
In the Dominican Republic, L. dispertitum appears to be confined to a single population inhabiting pine forests above 2400 meters on Pico Duarte and neighboring mountains in the Cordillera Central. In these areas, L. dispertitum is abundant and apparently found to the exclusion of most other ant species.
In Costa Rica there is only one record of L. dispertitum. Phil Ward collected it 4k E San Gerardo, 9¡28ÕN 83¡34ÕW, 2150m.
Literature Cited
Wild, A. L. 2007. Taxonomic Revision of the Ant Genus Linepithema (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, USA.
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