Nesomyrmex anduzei (Weber)

Pazmiño-Palomino, Alex, Troya, Adrián & Arredondo, Brandon S., 2025, Nesomyrmex paquisha: a new rough tree ant species from the isolated Cordillera del Cóndor, Ecuador, Journal of Natural History 59 (17 - 20), pp. 1181-1208 : 1192-1193

Nesomyrmex anduzei (Weber)

( Figures 5 , 9 )

country in the Neotropics.

Material examined

ECUADOR: 1♀; Sucumbíos, Shushufindi, Reserva Biológica Limoncocha ; 0.406639°S, 76.619758°W; 238 m; 20 September 2022; A . Pazmiño leg .; Hand collected; MECN-EN-9172; ECUADOR: 1 ☿; Orellana, Aguarico, Tiputini , Parque Nacional Yasuní , Tiputini Biodiversity Station ; 0.631944°S, 76.144167°W; 220–250 m; 31 January 2002; T . Erwin et al . leg.; canopy fogging; MEPN 31805 .

Comments

Nesomyrmex anduzei can be distinguished from its Neotropical congeners by the following combination of characters: in dorsal view, mesonotum sometimes rounded or with blunt edges, not projected laterally as a triangular lobe; antennal scape when pulled back surpassing the posterior margin of head. Humeri dentate. WL greater than or equal to 1.4 mm. Antenna with 12 antennomeres. Nesomyrmex anduzei belongs to the large Nesomyrmex species (WL> 1.4 mm) together with N. pulcher and N. sculptiventris (Mayr) . It differs from both by the strongly angled and serrated humeri, the mesonotum without lateral projections and obovoid petiole.

Specimens found in the Ecuadorian Amazon belong to a morphotype of N. anduzei , which Kempf (1959) names the ‘Colombian variety’. This morphotype differs from the description of the type material of N. anduzei in the body uniformly coloured (head and gaster darker in N. anduzei ), in the sculpture of the mesosomal dorsum slightly more vermiculate, dorsum of the petiolar node with longitudinal costae and postpetiole shorter and transverse. However, he did not find solid morphological evidence to separate the ‘Colombian variety’ from N. anduzei ( Kempf 1958, 1959).

Ecuadorian specimens were captured by hand on a wooden dock, normally used by local fishermen, at the Limoncocha lagoon, and by canopy fogging in the Amazon lowland rainforest. Nesomyrmex anduzei is distributed across Mexico, Central and South America ( Colombia, Venezuela, Guianas, Suriname, Brazil, and Peru) ( Table 1), and our record expands its known distribution by more than 370 km to the west of the nearest record in Amazonas, Colombia ( Guénard et al. 2017).

Figures

Figure 5. Nesomyrmex anduzei (Weber). (A) frontal view; (B) dorsal view; (C) lateral view. Scale bars = 1 mm. Images by B. Arredondo.

Figure 9. Distribution of Nesomyrmex paquisha sp. n. and new Nesomyrmex species records in Ecuador. Image by the authors.