A catalogue of the ants of Paraguay (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)
Author
Wild, Alexander L.
text
Zootaxa
2007
1622
1
55
journal article
10.5281/zenodo.179222
9584df9a-a4a2-49bb-a256-cb99776f4dc8
1175-5326
179222
|
Brachymyrmex aphidicola
Forel 1909
.
NEW STATUS
.
|
|
Brachymyrmex heeri
var.
aphidicola
Forel 1909: 263
.
|
[w |
syntypes |
examined, |
MHNG; |
San |
Bernadino, |
Cordillera, |
| Paraguay (Fiebrig)]. |
Brachymyrmex heeri
var.
fallax
Santschi 1923a: 665
.
NEW SYNONYMY.
[
Holotype
examined, NHMB;
Paraguay
(s. loc.)].
There is little reason to consider
Brachymyrmex heeri
and
B. aphidicola
as conspecific, as both species are locally sympatric and morphologically distinct in eastern
Paraguay
.
Brachymyrmex aphidicola
is one of the most abundant ground and litter nesting ant species in Paraguayan forests.
Brachymyrmex heeri
is more rarely collected, the two nest records I have from
Paraguay
are both arboreal. The two species are easily separated by the pubescence on gastric tergite 1 (= abd. tergite 3), with the pubescence dense on
B. heeri
and sparse on
B. aphidicola
. Santschi’s
type
of
B. heeri fallax
(NHMB, examined) falls within the range of variation exhibited by
B. aphidicola
in
Paraguay
and is synonymized here. It is worth mentioning here that Paraguayan specimens of
B. heeri
are a close match, in both the worker and queen castes, to Forel’s
types
of
B. heeri
(MHNG, examined) described from an introduced population in
Switzerland
(Forel 1874).
Given the notoriously poor taxonomic state of
Brachymyrmex
and the ubiquity of
B. aphidicola
in the region, there may well exist an older name for this species. A thorough taxonomic revision of this genus is sorely needed.