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Taxonomic History (provided by Barry Bolton, 2019)

Distribution:

  Geographic regions (According to curated Geolocale/Taxon lists):
    Americas: Brazil, Honduras, Panama, Venezuela
  Biogeographic regions (According to curated Bioregion/Taxon lists):
    Neotropical

Distribution Notes:

Honduras (type locality), Belize, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Brazil (Manaus) (Kempf 1975, Longino 1988). Costa Rica: lowland wet forest on both Atlantic and Pacific slopes.

Biology:

Natural History:

This species occurs in wet forest leaf litter, and is most often obtained in sifted litter samples. A Brazilian species, Thaumatomyrmex mutilatus, is a specialist predator of polyxenid millipedes (Brandao et al. 1991), and thus ferox may be as well.

Comments:

Longino note, 10 Nov 2013: DNA barcoding show this to be a complex of species. A small, narrow-headed form occurs from Honduras southward. It contains three DNA barcode clusters, but I can't find any morphological correlates. A large, broad-headed form occurs in Honduras and is sympatric with the small form(s). All the specimens from north of the Motagua fault (Guatemala, southern Mexico) look very uniform and are intermediate in size and head shape. I don't have any DNA data for these northern specimens.

References:

Brandao, C. R. F., J. L. M. Diniz, and E. M. Tomotake. 1991. Thaumatomyrmex strips millipedes for prey, a novel predatory behaviour in ants and the first case of sympatry in the genus. Insectes Soc. 38:335-344.

Kempf, W. W. 1975. A revision of the Neotropical ponerine ant genus Thaumatomyrmex Mayr (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Stud. Entomol. 18:95-126.

Longino, J. T. 1988. Notes on the taxonomy of the neotropical ant genus Thaumatomyrmex Mayr (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). In J. C. Trager (ed.), Advances in Myrmecology, pp. 35-42. E. J. Brill, New York.

Mann, W. M. 1922. Ants from Honduras and Guatemala. Proc. U. S. Natl. Mus. 61:1-54.

Specimen Habitat Summary

Found most commonly in these habitats: 1 times found in forest patch.

Elevations: collected at 800 m

Type specimens:

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