Kenya Ants

Straddling the equator, Kenya is largely a savannah grassland better known for its herds of grazing mammals and large predators than for its ants. Because ants have generally not been the focus of attention for most biologists, the country’s ant fauna is poorly known. Those scientific expeditions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that did collect occasional specimens found that most were new to science.

Eleven ant subfamilies are known from Kenya. The largest are the Formicinae (70+ species in 10 genera) and Myrmicinae (200+ species in 27 genera). The most species-rich genera are Camponotus (30+ species), Crematogaster (20+ species), Monomorium (30+ species) and Tetramorium (30+ species). Surprisingly, there appear to be comparatively few species of Pheidole (13 recorded species), but this number is expected to increase.

Kenya’s ant fauna is comprised of three distinctive elements. The western rainforests feature genera such as Dorylus, Plectroctena, Phasmomyrmex, Axinidris and numerous rainforest species of Pyramica, Strumigenys, Monomorium and Tetramorium. Kenya’s extensive savannah grasslands feature a host of species shared with Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia. These are principally species in genera such as Pachycondyla, Camponotus, Monomorium, Tetramorium as well as characteristic savannah genera such as Messor and Ocymyrmex. Much more limited are the eastern coastal forests, which extend along the eastern coast of Africa from Somalia to Mozambique. These habitats are now highly fragmented and greatly disturbed. A few genera or species otherwise found only in the western rainforests turn up here, but in the main, the species here are not found elsewhere in Kenya .

Beginning in 1999 and continuing to the present, Roy Snelling has conducted intensive sampling of ants at two Kenya sites: Mpala Research Centre in Rift Valley Province and Kakamega Forest Reserve in Western Province. The Mpala site is savannah grassland, while the Kakamega site is a remnant of the great Guinean rainforest that once stretched across equatorial Africa from Ivory Coast to western Kenya and Tanzania. Most of the ants collected during these surveys are deposited in the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, but additional vouchers exist in the National Museums of Kenya, Nairobi, the International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology (Nairobi), Mpala Research Centre, and the United States National Museum of Natural History (Washington).

Roy Snelling
Kenya Ant Curator