Pheidole exigua

At La Sagasse Bay on Grenada, West Indies, Stefan Cover and I found several colonies of exigua in small pieces of rotten wood on the floor of dry semi-deciduous forest. A colony of the closely similar P. flavens was in a rotten stump on the grounds of an ecotourism resort several hundred meters away. (Wilson 2003)

Identification
See the description in the nomenclature section.

Distribution
I have seen material from Costa Rica, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Trinidad, Guyana, French Guiana, and Las Gamas, Santa Cruz, Bolivia, while Kempf (1972b) records it in addition from Pará and Pernambuco in Brazil. (Wilson 2003)

This taxon was described from French Guiana.

Nomenclature

 *  exigua. Pheidole exigua Mayr, 1884: 36 (s.) FRENCH GUIANA. Wheeler, W.M. 1908a: 135 (w.q.). Subspecies of flavens: Emery, 1894c: 156. Revived status as species: Wilson, 2003: 416.

Description
From Wilson (2003): A member of the “flavens complex” within the larger flavens group, which includes Pheidole asperithorax, Pheidole breviscapa (=Pheidole perpusilla), Pheidole exigua, Pheidole flavens, Pheidole orbica and Pheidole sculptior and possibly just an extreme variant of flavens. Pheidole exigua is distinguished as follows.

Major: in side and dorsal-oblique views promesonotal profile strongly convex as well as high relative to the metanotum and propodeum, and dropping to the metanotum through a long, almost vertical face; shallow antennal scrobes present, their surfaces smooth and shiny, their anterior third also covered by longitudinal carinulae; intercarinular spaces of head sparsely foveolate to feebly shiny; occiput smooth and shiny; pronotal dorsum mostly covered by transverse carinulae, its surface sparsely foveolate and feebly shiny; posterior half of dorsal head profile flat.

Minor: carinulae confined to head anterior the eyes; almost all of head, mesosoma, and sides of waist foveolate and opaque.

MEASUREMENTS (mm) Lectotype major: HW 0.80, HL 0.84, SL 0.44, EL 0.08, PW 0.36. Paralectotype minor: HW 0.40, HL 0.46, SL 0.38, EL 0.06, PW 0.24.

COLOR Major: body except gaster medium reddish yellow; gaster medium plain yellow, except for rear half of first tergite, which is light brown.

Minor: body and mandibles brownish yellow; other appendages medium plain yellow.



'''Figure. Upper: lectotype, major. Lower: paralectotype, minor. Scale bars = 1 mm.'''

Type Material
- as reported in Wilson (2003)

Type Locality Information
FRENCH GUIANA: Cayenne (collected by "M. Jelski," no first name given). (Wilson 2003)

Etymology
L exigua, small, trifling. (Wilson 2003)

Additional References
Kempf, W. W. 1972b. Catálogo abreviado das formigas da região Neotropical. Stud. Entomol. 15: 3–344.

Mayr, G. 1884. [Untitled. Descriptions of eight new species.]. In O.Radoszkowsky, Fourmis de Cayenne Française, pp. 31–38. Tr. Rus. Entomol. Obshch. 18: 30–39.

Text and images from this publication used by permission of the author.