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Nylanderia usul
| Nylanderia usul | |
|---|---|
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Class: | Insecta |
| Order: | Hymenoptera |
| Family: | Formicidae |
| Subfamily: | Formicinae |
| Tribe: | Lasiini |
| Genus: | Nylanderia |
| Species: | N. usul |
| Binomial name | |
| Nylanderia usul Williams, Williams, LaPolla & Lucky, 2025 | |
Photo Gallery
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Identification
Antennae relatively short, with scapes surpassing posterior margin by about a quarter to a third of their length; color variable from yellow to dark brown, with meso- and metacoxae at most somewhat lighter than mesosoma; fine cuticular microsculpture resulting in moderate to strong blue iridescence on head, mesosoma, and gaster; moderate to dense cephalic pubescence; propodeum high and evenly rounded, with posterior face steep and at most slightly longer than dorsal face.
Nylanderia usul workers most strongly resemble those of Nylanderia mendax and Nylanderia mosaica. This species is most readily separable from N. mendax by its relatively short scapes, which only surpass the posterior margin of the head by a quarter to a third of their length, whereas in N. mendax they surpass the posterior margin by nearly half their length. There are two distinct color morphs of this species. The dark form is dark brown with yellow to yellow brown mandibles and tarsi, meso- and metacoxae somewhat lighter than the mesosoma, and has moderate cephalic pubescence, concentrated mostly as patches around the compound eyes (Fig. 4B). The light form is uniformly yellow, with dense cephalic pubescence (Fig. 4A). The light form is more likely to be confused with N. mosaica, but the latter is smaller in overall size and bicolored with a yellow to yellow-brown head and mesosoma and medium to dark brown gaster. Interestingly, the light form, represented by NT002, NT003, NT020, and NT024 in the phylogeny (Fig. 3), resolved as paraphyletic with respect to the dark form. This pattern may indicate a case of incipient speciation, in which one is beginning to diverge from the other but has not yet achieved full reproductive isolation. Consequently, the two forms may be interpretable as two distinct species based on their morphology. However, for now we conservatively treat them all as a single species. If someday these two forms are split into separate species, the dark form will keep the name N. usul and the light form will take a new name.
Compare with: Nylanderia mendax, Nylanderia mosaica.
Keys including this Species
Distribution
Nylanderia usul is only known from moderate to high elevation forests in Costa Rica (Fig. 2B), where it is sympatric with only N. mosaica and no other species in American Clade I.
Williams et al. (2025), Fig. 2. Distributions of species: (A) N. austroccidua in the United States and northern Mexico, (B) species found across southern Mexico and Mesoamerica, and (C) N. docilis in South America. Maps were created using GPS coordinates listed in Table S1 and from the Global Ant Biodiversity Informatics (GABI; Guénard et al. 2017) database.
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Latitudinal Distribution Pattern
Latitudinal Range: 10.3° to 9.6°.
| North Temperate |
North Subtropical |
Tropical | South Subtropical |
South Temperate |
- Source: Williams et al., 2025
Distribution based on Regional Taxon Lists
Neotropical Region: Costa Rica (type locality).
Distribution based on AntMaps
Distribution based on AntWeb specimens
Check data from AntWeb
Countries Occupied
| Number of countries occupied by this species based on AntWiki Regional Taxon Lists. In general, fewer countries occupied indicates a narrower range, while more countries indicates a more widespread species. |
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Estimated Abundance
| Relative abundance based on number of AntMaps records per species (this species within the purple bar). Fewer records (to the left) indicates a less abundant/encountered species while more records (to the right) indicates more abundant/encountered species. |
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Biology
Castes
Nomenclature
The following information is derived from Barry Bolton's Online Catalogue of the Ants of the World.
- usul. Nylanderia usul Williams et al., 2025: 584, figs. 62-70 (w.q.m.) COSTA RICA.
Type Material
- Holotype worker, COSTA RICA: San José, 11km SSE Santa María, 9.55301 -83.94523 ±10m, elev. 1950m, 24.vi.2015, cloud forest, sifted litter, ADMAC#Wa-E-04-1-49 (USNM: USNMENT01131798).
- 5 paratype workers, 1 paratype queen, and 1 paratype male with same locality data as holotype (USNM: USNMENT01131109, USNMENT01131799, USNMENT01131800, USNMENT01131819, USNMENT01131831; MNCR: USNMENT01131802, USNMENT01131804).