Basiceros scambognathus (Brown, 1949)

Arredondo, Brandon S., Carreño-Guevara, Yennifer, Gutierrez-Villanueva, Yenifer, Duran-Bautista, Ervin Humprey, Gamboa-Tabares, Jean & Guerrero, Roberto J., 2025, Soil and leaf litter ants from the Amazon Region offer new distribution records for Colombia, Biodiversity Data Journal 13, pp. e 142813-e 142813 : e142813-

Basiceros scambognathus (Brown, 1949)

Materials

Type status: Other material. Occurrence: catalogNumber: LEUA- 00000066497 ; recordedBy: Brandon S. Arredondo; individualCount: 1; sex: female; occurrenceID: 06C73F41-B04B-59CF-96CB-514B60B5F3F5; Taxon: scientificName: Basiceros scambognathus ; kingdom: Animalia; phylum: Arthropoda; class: Insecta; order: Hymenoptera ; family: Formicidae ; genus: Basiceros ; specificEpithet: scambognathus ; scientificNameAuthorship: (Brown, 1949); Location: continent: South America; country: Colombia; countryCode: CO; stateProvince: Caquetá; county: Florencia; locality: Universidad de la Amazonia, sede centro ; verbatimElevation: 249 m; locationRemarks: Collected in leaf Litter; verbatimCoordinates: 01°36'20"N 75°36'17"W; verbatimCoordinateSystem: WGS 84; Event: samplingProtocol: Winkler; eventDate: 2023-08-18; Record Level: language: es; collectionID: RNC: 270; institutionCode: Universidad de la Amazonia (UDLA); basisOfRecord: PreservedSpecimen

Type status: Other material. Occurrence: catalogNumber: LEUA- 00000066498 ; recordedBy: Brandon S. Arredondo; individualCount: 1; sex: female; occurrenceID: D7E977A5-D3AD-5CEB-AA07-2E0ABA414D91; Taxon: scientificName: Basiceros scambognathus ; kingdom: Animalia; phylum: Arthropoda; class: Insecta; order: Hymenoptera ; family: Formicidae ; genus: Basiceros ; specificEpithet: scambognathus ; scientificNameAuthorship: (Brown, 1949); Location: continent: South America; country: Colombia; countryCode: CO; stateProvince: Caquetá; county: Florencia; locality: Universidad de la Amazonia, sede centro ; verbatimElevation: 249 m; locationRemarks: Collected in leaf Litter; verbatimCoordinates: 01°36'20"N 75°36'17"W; verbatimCoordinateSystem: WGS 84; Event: samplingProtocol: Winkler; eventDate: 2023-08-18; Record Level: language: es; collectionID: RNC: 270; institutionCode: Universidad de la Amazonia (UDLA); basisOfRecord: PreservedSpecimen

Diagnosis

This species is recognised within the genus Basiceros by the following characteristics: occipital margin strongly emarginate generating two occipital lobes, mandible subtriangular, strongly bent ventrally, outer edges straight basally; mesoanapisternum strongly depressed (Fig. 8 ).

Distribution

This species was previously recorded in the Department of Amazonas ( Fernández and Palacio 1995). It is reported here for the first time in the Department of Caquetá. In the Neotropical Region, the species has also been recorded in Brazil, Peru and Venezuela ( Probst and Brandão 2022).

Biology

According to Probst and Brandão (2022), the unusual morphology of the mandibles of the species suggests specific predation conditions. However, records on its biology are limited to those obtained by Feitosa et al. (2007); a queen was observed preying on termites under artificial conditions.

Figures

Figure 8. Basiceros scambognathus queen (LEUA- 00000066497) A head in frontal view; B body in dorsal view; C body in lateral view. Scale bars: 1.0 mm (A, B, C).