myrmicinae
awild | August 20, 2009Biodiversity discovery continues apace. The past couple of weeks have seen not one, but TWO new myrmicine ant genera.
First, Shattuck described the Australian Austromorium:
Austromorium hetericki Shattuck 2009 - Australia
Then this morning, Fernández et al introduced a pretty little yellow ant from Brazil, Diaphoromyrma:
Diaphoromyrma sofiae Fernández et al 2009 - Brazil
Neither of these new ants show any unambiguous relationship to existing ant genera. But that's been the story with myrmicinae, even in the age of molecular systematics. The subfamily contains nearly half of all ants…
awild | February 23, 2009Stenamma sp., California.
This request comes from Michael Branstetter:
I am working on a broad-scale phylogeny of the ant genus Stenamma and am in search of fresh specimens from the Old World. Stenamma is a cryptic genus that is most often collected in forest leaf litter. The genus is primarily Holarctic in distribution, but also has representatives in the New World tropics. Producing a phylogeny of the genus will help me in my quest to better understand the genus as a whole and to revise the Mesoamerican species. In the Old World there are species records from Europe, northern…