Anochetus bispinosus

Today I rechecked all of my Anochetus specimens. Why? Because I was browsing the Ants of Costa Rica web page and it said that Anochetus bispinosus was extremely rare and that in all the intensive collecting that had been done there they had only collected 3 workers from a single tree. And I have 4 specimens, so I started to doubt myself. Well, I have rechecked all of them and I am confident that all of my original identifications are correct, including the A. bispinosus specimens. It's actually a fairly easy key to deal with, and according to AntWeb, it has also been found in Brazil and Colombia, so it isn't crazy to find it in Ecuador. My four specimens (all workers) were collected by canopy fogging in 2 different trees fairly far removed from each other. I don't have pictures yet but they basically look exactly like the photos on the Ants of Costa Rica page.


More information:

From Bill and Emma Mackay's site -- a key to neotropical Anochetus can be found here.

From the Hymenoptera On-Line Database: Brown, W. L. 1978. Contributions toward a reclassification of the Formicidae. Part VI. Ponerinae, tribe Ponerini, subtribe Odontomachiti. Section B. Genus Anochetus and bibliography. Stud. Entomol. (N.S.) 20: 549-652. Browse or download entire file (5.3M)

From Jack Longino's Ants of Costa Rica site -- a key to Costa Rican species of Anochetus.

From the Hymenoptera Name Server -- a list of valid and invalid names including some original sources.

From AntWeb -- lots of Anochetus photos and specimen collection data.

From the MCZ Type Database -- a list of specimens at Harvard's Ant Room with lots o' photos. Just select "Hymenoptera" for Order and type in "Anochetus" under name.

From ponerine.org -- a really nifty list of Anochetus species which can be sorted taxonomically, alphabetically, by region, or by extant/extinct(ness). Awesome.