Dolichoderus utriensis Ortiz & Fernández, 2011

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 : 3

Dolichoderus utriensis Ortiz & Fernández, 2011

Figs. 1 , 21A

Material examined. Ecuador. Esmeraldas: Reserva Ecológica Cotacachi Cayapas, 4 Km S Gualpi, Onzole river , 0.76111°N, 79.1542°W, 50m, 3☿, 2001-04-01, Araujo, P. et al., fogging, ( MEPN) .

Comments. This species can be separated from its congenerics by the carinated propodeal lateral margins bearing a weak spine from which four erect hairs emerge. The morphology of the specimen we examined matches the diagnostic characters of the original description. However, as expected for a representative from another population separated from that of the Colombian collection site by almost 600 Km, our specimen displays certain morphological variations in reference to the illustration of Ortiz and Fernández (2011): absence of a lobe on the anterodorsal margin of the pronotum, mesonotum not bulging, and yellow hairs on the body dorsum. In Ecuador this species was collected by canopy fogging in the Chocó Biogeographic region. Nothing is known about its natural history except that it is likely arboreal. Dolichoderus utriensis was previously known by a single specimen from the Chocó Department of Colombia ( Ortiz and Fernández, 2011).

Figures

Figure 1 Dolichoderus utriensis Ortiz & Fernández (worker,MEPN 4890):A) profile,B) frontal view, C) dorsal view. Images by Vladimir Carvajal. Scale bars = 1 mm.

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