Thursday, March 01, 2007

Mystery Ants -- Solved!

So thank you to everyone who emailed me with help on those mystery ants. You were all very helpful.

Mystery Ant #1 has been identified as Cylindromyrmex godmani. I have been unable to compare my sample with an actual specimen (no godmani males at MCZ and the only one at NMNH was covered in gold and a little hard to compare) but after reviewing the key (de Andrade 1998) I am fairly confident that it is godmani due to the strongly converging frontal carinae, the size, and the petiole with only traces of striae.

Mystery Ant #2 is a Hypoponera male and probably unidentifiable to species. It was good to know, though, cause I have a bunch of these buggers. I sent them all to Shawn Dash who may or may not be able to do something useful with them.

Mystery Ant #3 is a Gigantiops destructor male, which is what I thought it was but I was finally able to find a specimen to compare it to at NMNH.

I will work on adding new mystery ants soon!

1 comment:

  1. We know what they are... a gigantic PIA. Now how do we get

    rid of them?

    ReplyDelete