Simopelta laticeps Gotwald & Brown, 1967

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 : 10

Simopelta laticeps Gotwald & Brown, 1967

Figs. 18, 21E

Material examined. Ecuador. El Oro: Santa Rosa, Birón Alto , 3.564°S, 79.774°W, 1472m, 8☿, 21-Nov-2018, Pazmiño, A. & Suárez-Torres, A., hand collected, ( MECN) .

Comments. This species can be distinguished by its posterior head margin being clearly concave medially; eyes present; mandible with four similarly sized teeth; and external mid tibial surface without thick and short hairs ( Fernández and Guerrero, 2019). This species is rarely collected, and nothing is known about its biology (L.Souza-Barros, pers. comm., Dec-2021). APP found some workers in a foothill forest off the pacific coast in southern Ecuador. Simopelta laticeps was previously reported for Colombia, Peru, and French Guiana ( Guénard et al., 2017).

Figures

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