Taxonomic History (provided by Barry Bolton, 2017)
Overview:
A cryptic inhabitant of forest floor leaf litter and rotten wood; Nicaraguan and Costa Rican cloud forest.
Distribution:
(based on species list records)
Neotropical Region: Americas,
Central America,
Costa Rica,
Matagalpa,
Nicaragua,
Puntarenas
Distribution Notes:
Southern Nicaragua, Costa Rica.
Biology:
Octostruma montanis is a cloud forest species known from two sites: Cerro Musún in southern Nicaragua and Monteverde in Costa Rica. Cerro Musún is an isolated mountain surrounded by largely deforested lowlands. The slopes from 700 m elevation to the peak at 1400 m are a protected reserve. The LLAMA project carried out Winkler sampling across the full elevational range of the reserve, and
O. montanis was restricted to parts of the reserve above 1100 m. In Monteverde in the Cordillera de Tilarán, northern Costa Rica,
O. montanis occurs in the ridge crest cloud forest at 1500 m elevation, but not lower. All collections are from Winkler samples of sifted litter and rotten wood from the forest floor.
Identification:
Face lacking transverse arcuate carina; basal five teeth of mandible acute; apex of labrum bilobed; face typically with 6 spatulate setae (8 in
O. cyrtinotum), seta-bearing pits along vertex margin large; filiform setae lacking on petiole, postpetiole, first gastral sternite; anterior half of dorsal face of propodeum convex, demarcating impressed metanotal groove; mesonotum lacking spatulate setae (with a pair in
O. cyrtinotum).
Comments:
Three worker series from Reserva Musún in Nicaragua are uniform in face setal pattern. Two worker series, each of two workers, are known from Monteverde, Costa Rica, and they vary in setal pattern. One series is identical to the Musún specimens, with the same number and disposition of setae, and the same enlarged seta-bearing pits. The other has only the posteromedian seta pair and the pits are not enlarged. The seta pair at the lateral vertex angles and the pair near the eyes are missing and there are no differentiated pits at these sites, so their absence is probably not due to wear. This setal pattern is the same as
O. planities, which occurs in the nearby dry-forest lowlands. In all other characters the specimens are like other
O. montanis specimens.
Specimen Habitat Summary
Found most commonly in these habitats: 3 times found in cloud forest, 1 times found in montane wet forest, 1 times found in wet cloud forest, 2 times found in wet montane forest, 1 times found in dwarf forest.
Found most commonly in these microhabitats: 6 times ex sifted leaf litter, 1 times ex sifted litter from forest floor, 1 times ex sifted leaf litter on ground.
Collected most commonly using these methods: 6 times maxiWinkler, 2 times Winkler.
Elevations: collected from 1100 - 1560 meters, 1281 meters average
Type specimens: holotype Octostruma montanis Longino 2013: casent0627340; paratype Octostruma montanis Longino 2013: casent0623873, casent0627338, casent0627339, casent0627341, casent0639986, casent0639988, casent0639990, casent0639991
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