The Ants of Barro Colorado Natural Monument, Panama

The following is a working list of ant species collected from Barro Colorado Island. Like any tropical species list it is by its nature a work in progress.. My goal is to build a database that links an identification resources with species accounts. To this end, species entries will be linked to existing online resources and images (with a heavy emphasis at first on the Longino Ants of Costa Rica pages). Where such resources do not exist, I will make them.  All errors are my own. If you have any comments or contributions, please contact me.  If you have new records, please let me know where the specimens have been deposited and include a citation if it exists.

Most of the species listed here are the product of my lab’s collections on BCI over the past 13 years. We have collected from the litter, harvesting nests and laying out baits (peanut butter, Keebler Pecan Sandies, cotton balls soaked in sugar water, and pieces of turkey). We have collected from the sides of trees and from the canopy. We have tried excavating nests, mostly without success. We have walked trails at night looking for army ants. We have collected alates (and a surprising assortment of workers) from malaise traps and light traps. Two folks from my lab, Mike Weiser, and Dr. Steve Yanoviak, have been particularly adept and savvy collectors.  I thank them. This research has been supported by NSF, DOE, STRI, and the Mellon Foundation.

Stefan Cover at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Phil Ward at UC Davis, and Jack Longino at Evergreen State College have been unflaggingly helpful in teaching me the trade and assisting me in every phase of this project. Stefan showed me John Tobin’s canopy fogging specimens from Barro Colorado National Monument, and I supplemented this list with these species when appropriate. The list was checked against and supplemented with records from four myrmecologists: Carl Rettenmeyer (1963), Sally Levings (1983), and Don Feener and Gene Schuup (1998).

Nomenclature

A word about the species names. All species names and authorities conform to Bolton (1995) supplemented by more recent work in the references below. If a species name is italicized it is a published species (i.e., accompanied by an author-date, which should be found in Bolton 1995 or the above papers). All told, I have recorded 64 genera and 225 published ant species on BCI as of the date of this page.  The taxa without an official Latin binomial are unpublished. Here is a key:

PSW unpublished=Phil Ward (UC Davis)—these are working species codes based on Ward’s study of Pseudomyrmex.

JTL Morphospecies=Jack Longino (Evergreen State College)—many of these are species codes from Longino's study of the La Selva fauna.

SC / JT / MEK Morphospecies=These represent species that failed to match existing collections at the MCZ. SC=Stefan Cover, curatorial assistant  and JT=John Tobin, both at the Museum of Comparative Zoology and MEK= Mike Kaspari, University of Oklahoma. A fair number of MEK morphospecies are alates.

References

Andrade ML, Baroni Urbani C (1999) Diversity and adaptation in the ant genus Cephalotes, past and present (Hymenoptera, Formicidae). Stuttgarter Beitrage zur Naturkunde Serie B (Geologie und Palaontologie)  271: 1-889.

Bolton B (1995) A New General Catalogue of the Ants of the World. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Bolton B (1999) Ant genera of the tribe Dacetonini (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Journal of Natural History 33:1639-1689

Feener DH Jr, Schupp EW (1998) Effect of treefall gaps on the patchiness and species richness of Neotropical ant assemblages. Oecologia 116:191-201

Kugler C (1994) Revision of the ant genus Rogeria (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) with descriptions of the sting apparatus. Journal of Hymenopteran Research 3:17-89

Levings SC (1983) Seasonal, annual, and among-site variation in the ground ant community of a deciduous tropical forest: some causes of patchy species distributions. Ecol. Monogr 53:435 - 455

Rettenmeyer CW (1963) Behavioral studies of army ants. Univ. Kans. Sci. Bull. 44:281-465

Wilson, E. O (2003) Pheidole in the New World. Harvard University Press. Cambridge MA.

C=Cerapachyinae, D=Dolichoderinae, E=Ecitoninae, F=Formicinae, M=Myrmicinae, P=poneromorphs, S=Pseudomyrmicinae