Forelius damiani Guerrero & Fernández 2008
Colombia
The ant genus Forelius - named for the eminent Swiss myrmecologist Auguste Forel- is known for its abundance in hot, dry climates in both North and South America. This affinity for deserts has given the genus a markedly disjunct distribution, abundant in subtropical South America and in the warmer regions of North and Central America but absent in the more humid intervening climes. Or so we'd assumed.
Last week Colombian myrmecologists Roberto Guerrero & Fernando Fernández filled the gap with a newly-discovered species of Forelius. Their collections matched several undescribed specimens from Jack Longino's Costa Rican surveys, and is the first Forelius known from Colombia.
source: Guerrero & Fernández 2008. A new species of the ant genus Forelius (Formicidae: Dolichoderinae) from Colombia. Zootaxa 1958: 51-60.
- Log in to post comments
More like this
Amyrmex: Dolichoderinae? Leptanilloidinae? Who knew?
A paper out this week in Zootaxa reminds us of the hazards of excessive reliance on the worker caste for ant taxonomy. Phil Ward and Seán Brady sequenced DNA from few genes from the enigmatic Amyrmex, a rarely-collected dolichoderine genus…
Kalathomyrmex emeryi (Forel 1907), Argentina.
In Zootaxa last week, Christiana Klingenberg and Beto Brandão introduced to the world an entirely new genus of fungus-growing ant, Kalathomyrmex. Yet the single species, K. emeryi, is a widespread neotropical insect that has been known for over a…
Biodiversity 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…
Daceton boltoni Azorsa & Sosa-Calvo 2008
Iquitos, Peru
If I had to make a list of the most beautiful ants in the world, the honey-colored trap-jaw ant Daceton armigerum would be near the top. Daceton is an unmistakable insect: large, graceful, spiny, with bulging eyes and a heart-shaped head…