Cephalotes simillimus (Kempf, 1951)

Pazmiño-Palomino, Alex & Troya, Adrian, 2022, Ants of Ecuador: new species records for a megadiverse country in South America, Revista Brasileira de Entomologia (e 20210089) 66 (2), pp. 1-15 : 7

Cephalotes simillimus (Kempf, 1951)

Figs. 12 , 21C

Material examined. Ecuador. Napo: Jatun Sacha Biological Reserve , 1.06667°S, 77.6167°W, 450m, 1☿, 2008-12-05, Troya, A. & Vizuete ,

J., fogging ( MEPN); Orellana: Parque Nacional Yasuní, 27 Km SSE Limoncocha , 0.625226°S, 76.4967°W, 207m, 2☿, 2007-10-21, Troya, A., fogging ( MEPN) ; same information, except: 1☿, 2007-06-15, Troya, A., ( MEPN) ; Parque Nacional Yasuní, 28 Km SSE Limoncocha , 0.62389°S, 76.4806°W, 209m, 1☿, 2008-05-18, Troya, A., fogging ( MEPN) ; Parque Nacional Yasuní , 58 km SEE Limoncocha, 0.631944°S, 76.1442°W, 250m, 1☿, 1☿ (soldier), 2002-07-21, Erwin, T. et al., fogging ( MEPN) .

Comments. This is a member of the C. pusillus group sensu Oliveira et al. (2021). Cephalotes simillimus is highly similar to its sister species C. minutus Fabricius , however, the latter shows more laterally salient and defined pronotal teeth (more like denticle- and lamella-shaped in C. simillimus ); also, the posterior propodeal spines in C. minutus usually do not expand ventrally in a lamella (these spines do expand into a lamella in all our C. simillimus ). This species has been recorded only in South America, showing more records in lowland rain forests of central and southern Amazonia, though reaching also forest remnants in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest ( De Andrade and Baroni Urbani, 1999), and xeric shrublands of the Cerrado in Brazil ( Oliveira et al. 2021). Virtually nothing is known about the biology of C. simillimus except that it may nest in dead twigs and live branches (C. Moreau in AntWeb, 2021). Current examined specimens were all collected through canopy fogging, mostly in primary Amazonian rain forests. Cephalotes simillimus has been previously recorded in Colombia, Guyana, French Guiana, Bolivia, Peru, and Brazil (Acre, Amazonas, Bahia, Mato Grosso, Minas Gerais, Goiás, Rondônia, Roraima, Pará, Sergipe) ( De Andrade and Baroni Urbani, 1999; Sandoval-Gómez and Sánchez-Restrepo, 2019; Oliveira et al. 2021).

Figures

Figure 12 Cephalotes simillimus (Kempf) (worker, MEPN 4740): A) dorsal view, B) frontal view, C) profile.Images by Adrian Troya.Scale bars = 1 mm.

Figure 21 Geographic distribution of the species examined in the present study.