Anochetus isolatus Mann, 1959

Wilson EO, 1959, Studies on the ant fauna of Melanesia V. The tribe Odontomachini., Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology 120, pp. 483-510 : 508

Anochetus isolatus Mann , n. status

(Fig. 2)

Anochetus cato subsp. isolatus Mann , 1919, Bull. Mus. Comp. Zoo!., 03:302, fig. 11, worker, male. Type locality: Graciosa Bay, Santa Cruz. (Syntypes examined - MCZ.)

Material examined. SANTA CRUZ : Graciosa Bay (syntypes). Mann also recorded this species from Malapaina, Three Sisters Group, Solomons, on which island it occurs sympatrically with the closely related A. cato Forel .

Taxonomic note. A. isolatus forms with A. splendens (Aru) , A. seminiger (Waigeo) , and A. splendidulus (Carolines) , the " isolatus superspecies," i.e., a tightly-knit group of cognate forms which seem sufficiently well differentiated to be good biological species, but which are completely allopatric in distribution . Actually, treatment of these four forms as species must be considered arbitrary until evidence is obtained of non-intergradation in areas of overlap, if indeed such areas exist at all.

The range of the isolatus superspecies forms a nearly complete circle around that of the related species cato . Brown (Quart. Rev. Biol., 32:271, 1957) has suggested that this unusual pattern may have resulted from the replacement of isolât in New Guinea, Bismarck Archipelago, and western Solomons by the more recently evolved rato.