Taxonomic review of the genus Wasmannia.
Author
Longino, J. T.
Author
Fernández, F.
text
Memoirs of the American Entomological Institute
Editor
Snelling, R. R.
Editor
Fisher, B. L.
Editor
Ward, P. S.
2007
Advances in ant systematics (Hymenoptera: Formicidae): Homage to E. O. Wilson - 50 years of contributions.
80
271
289
http://hdl.handle.net/10199/15361
journal article
21284
Wasmannia sigmoidea (Mayr)
Fig. 1, Table 1
Tetramorium sigmoideum Mayr
(in Radoszkowsky), 1884: 33.
Syntype
worker:
Cayenne
, French Guiana (
Jelski
) [
NMW
]
(examined, one worker here designated LECTOTYPE). Combination in
Wasmannia
and description of queen and male: Forel, 1893: 386.
Comments
Wasmannia sigmoidea
is the second oldest name in the genus and to date has been poorly characterized. It has never been satisfactorily differentiated from other species in the genus, particularly
rochai
. Forel (1884) identified material from St. Vincent Island in the Antilles as
W. sigmoidea
, and described the queen and male. We have not been able to examine the workers of this collection, but the queens match queens of
sigmoidea
from Puerto Rico and Costa Rica.
Kempf (1972) gives the range of
sigmoidea
as Guianas, Antilles St. Vincent, Grenada, and Santa Catarina state of Brazil. The Guianas are listed because of the type locality in French Guiana and some Surinam specimens he tentatively identified as
sigmoidea
(Kempf 1961). The St. Vincent record is based on Forel ’ s publication. We do not know the basis of the Grenada record. The Santa Catarina record is based on a published record by Mayr (1887), which is a misidentification of specimens of
affinis
(see under
affinis
). We have examined abundant material from Puerto Rico, multiple collections from Costa Rica, and a collection from Guarico state in Venezuela. Thus the current known range of
sigmoidea
is circumcaribbean.
The few Costa Rican records are as follows. David Olson collected workers during his study of Winkler and pitfall trap sampling methods at La Selva Biological Station (Olson 1991, as
Wasmannia
sp. 1). This was the only known collection from La Selva, in spite of intensive inventory effort there (Longino et al., 2002), until an August, 2004 collection of workers and alate queens from the rootball of a palm tree in the laboratory clearing. Workers occurred in four different samples from the Project ALAS expeditions to the 500 m site on the Barva Transect: two Malaise trap samples, one flight-intercept sample, and one sweep net sample (Table 2). It is likely that
sigmoidea
prefers open and synanthropic habitats, hence its undersampling in Costa Rica, where sampling emphasis has been in forested habitats.