Formicinae, Formicidae, Hymenoptera, Insecta, Arthropoda, Animalia
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Additional images: worker scape (small, large).
Range
Costa Rica: widespread in wet to moist forest habitats, sea level to 1200m, not in cloud forest or dry forest.
Identification
Scape with macrochaetae conspicuous, long, strongly differentiated from appressed pubescence; color uniform brown, including coxae, although trochanters may be lighter; appressed pubescence present on mesosoma, absent on first gastral tergite.
Natural History
This species prefers moist to wet forest habitats. It is arboreal, nesting in various cavities from just above ground level to the canopy. At La Selva Biological Station, workers are relatively frequent in canopy fogging and Malaise samples, but rare in Winkler samples.
I have found nests in hollow dead sticks in low vegetation, in internodes of Cecropia saplings, under epiphytes, and layered between Heliconia leaves. When I found a nest between Heliconia leaves, the leaves appeared to have fallen together horizontally by accident. The ants had built a thin nest of messy carton between the leaves. I often finds nests in close proximity to other ant species: I have found them near a Crematogaster longispina nest, in the same stick with a C. carinata nest, and in leaf bases of an Aechmea tillandsiodes var. kienastii plant on a not too active Azteca ant-garden. Many branch tips near this ant garden had small shelters covering Paratrechina workers and one or two large, globose coccids.
Workers are common on extrafloral nectaries, and I have found them tending Membracidae.
Page author:
John T. Longino, The Evergreen State College, Olympia WA 98505 USA.longinoj@evergreen.edu
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