Cephalotes porrasi

Distribution
This taxon was described from Panama.

Morphology
Wheeler and Holldobler (1985) investigated how Cepholates workers might collect or accumulate debri on their head disks. Such debri can be used as camouflage for individuals that are using their head to block the nest entrance, much like Basicerotini and Stegomyrmicini ant species affix dirt their bodies. They discovered Cephalotes porrasi do in fact have encrusted material on their head disks. This varied from slight to extremely built-up material. Unexpectedly these covering materials appeared to be produced by the ants, rather than an accumulation of material that was affixed and somehow binded to the head disk. The presence of many pores, which are presumably attached to glands, are the likely source of secreted fibrous and filmy substances that were detected.

They also discovered: "Z. pallens porrasi (=C. porrasi) (Figs. 7-9). The two soldiers shown in Figs. 7-9 were collected from the same colony. The soldier is characterized by large brush setae on the cephalic disc (Fig. 7). Similar views of the two soldiers, one clean and one dirty, are shown in Fig. 8. In the soldier that appeared clean, the brush setae were free of accumulated material, but the surface seemed to be obscured by a thick encrusting material (Figs. 7, 8a). The second soldier had such a thick accumulation that the large brush setae were almost completely buried (Figs. 8b, 9a). The material on the head of the dirty soldier appeared fibrous (Fig. 9b), much like the material seen on the head of Z. varians (Cephalotes varians)(Fig. 3a)."

Nomenclature

 *  porrasi. Cryptocerus (Cyathocephalus) pallens var. porrasi Wheeler, W.M. 1942: 210, pl. 52 (s.w.q.m.) PANAMA. Combination in Cephalotes: De Andrade & Baroni Urbani, 1999: 486. Junior synonym of pallens: Kempf, 1958a: 151. Revived from synonymy and raised to species: De Andrade & Baroni Urbani, 1999: 486.

Additional References

 * [[Media:Wheeler_&_Holldobler_1985.pdf|Wheeler, D. E.; Hölldobler, B. 1986 ("1985"). Cryptic phragmosis: the structural modifications. Psyche (Cambridge) 92:337-353. [1986-04-27] PDF]]