Third Argentine record of <em>Eurhopalotrhix bruchi</em> (Santschi, 1922) (Hymenoptera, Formicidae), description of an interomorphic queen and the colony, and notes on biology and ecology

Check List 14(2): 329-334, doi: 10.15560/14.2.329

Third Argentine record of Eurhopalotrhix bruchi (Santschi, 1922) (Hymenoptera, Formicidae), description of an interomorphic queen and the colony, and notes on biology and ecology

Juan M. Arcusa^‡, Armando C. Cicchino^§

‡ Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina§ Laboratorio de Artrópodos, INBIOTEC-CONICET-UNMdP, Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Mar del Plata, Argentina

Corresponding author: Juan M. Arcusa ( juan.arcusa@gmail.com )

Academic editor: Filippo Di Giovanni

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Citation: Arcusa JM, Cicchino AC (2018) Third Argentine record of Eurhopalotrhix bruchi (Santschi, 1922) (Hymenoptera, Formicidae), description of an interomorphic queen and the colony, and notes on biology and ecology. Check List 14(2): 329-334. https://doi.org/10.15560/14.2.329

Abstract

Eurhopalothrix bruchi is the only species of the genus present in Argentina. We present only the third record of this species from Argentina and describe for the first time the female and characteristics of the colony. The nest collected had 48 workers, 6 queens, and 4 pupae. The queens are characterized as wingless, without wing sclerites, and worker-like. The scarcity of pre-imaginal stages suggests that fission of the colony led to the nest’s foundation.

Keywords

Apterous females; dispersal strategies; biogeography