A new species of Cyphomyrmex from Colombia, with further remarks on the genus (Hymenoptera, Formicidae).
Author
Kempf, W. W.
text
Revista Brasileira de Biologia
1968
28
35
41
http://antbase.org/ants/publications/4586/4586.pdf
journal article
4586
1. Subgenus
Cyphomannia
Weber -
This optional category was founded upon the lone Bolivian species
laevigatus Weber
. It is indeed a striking species. The completely smooth thorax, devoid of the costumary tubercles, teeth and spines is unique. Nevertheless, the overall appearance and a set of characters which to my mind are useful for infrageneric grouping (without going into subgenera) show that
laevigatus
falls nicely into the rimosus-group, in a stricter sense, i. e. excluding the somewhat aberrant forms such as
longiscapus
,
costatus
,
wheeleri
and possible allies. The head of
laevigatus
is practically identical with that of
bicornis
, and the latter also lacks a pronotal and epinotal armature, only the mesonotum having an anterior pair of conical low spines and a posterior pair of inconspicuous welts; in addition, the petiole and postpetiole of
bicornis
are practically smooth as in
laevigatus
(cf. Kempf, 1966: 177-9, figs. 4, 5, 23, 26, 32, 33). Moreover, Weber is wrong in assuming that when I first proposed this case of synonymy (Kempf, 1962) I had no direct knowledge of laevigatus-material. Already in 1961 (p. 518) I mentioned the specimens from Dutch Guiana which are perfectly identical with the types, available to me already by the end of 1962. Since
Cyphomyrmex
contains other striking and morphologically isolated species (v. gr.
occultus
,
morschi
,
longiscapus
), there would be no end for decorative subgenera. Therefore, I consider
Cyphomannia
a useless burden which should stay buried for the sake of healthy taxonomy.