Cephalotes haemorrhoidalis

This taxon is considered to be unidentifiable and its identity is uncertain.

Distribution based on type material
Haiti, Haiti.

Nomenclature

 *  haemorrhoidalis. Formica haemorrhoidalis Latreille, 1802c: 276 (w.) HAITI. Combination in Cryptocerus: Lepeletier, 1835: 172; in Cryptocerus (Paracryptocerus): Emery, 1915i: 192; in Cryptocerus (Hypocryptocerus): Wheeler, W.M. 1920: 53; in Hypocryptocerus: Wheeler, W.M. 1936b: 200; in Zacryptocerus: Brandão, 1991: 384. See also: Kempf, 1951: 146. Unidentifiable taxon, incertae sedis in Cephalotes: De Andrade & Baroni Urbani, 1999: 735.

Description
The original description of Latreille is too vague on one hand to be useful by present standards, but it contains, on the other hand, some details about the coloration of this species not fitting any of the species presently recognised from Hispaniola. It is easy to suppose, nonetheless, that if the type of this species still exists, its discovery may imply the synonymy of one of the species described in this paper under another name. Emery (1896) shows that the pigmentation process of callow individuals in Cephalotes is not uniform but follows different morphological patterns in different species. On the basis of this observation he suggests that C. haemorrhoidalis should be an immature of Cephalotes pusillus. This guess appears very unlikely (the record of pusillus closest to Hispaniola is Trinidad) but the same explanation of incomplete pigmentation may apply much better to any member of the hamulus clade. For the time being, any further guess on the true identity of haemorrhoidalis would be purely gratuitous.