Strumigenys pulchella

Strumigenys pulchella is a wide-ranging eastern to midwestern species often found nesting in hardwood stumps and rotting fallen branches. In Kansas, Dubois (1985) reports a colony collected in rotten wood in a deciduous forest. (Booher, 2021)

Identification
Bolton (2000) - A member of the Strumigenys pulchella-group. There are four species in this group that have recurved or reflexed spatulate to spoon-shaped hairs somewhere on the clypeal margins. These peculiar hairs may occur on all margins, or may be confined to one or two pairs on the anterior margin immediately above the mandibles. Of the four pulchella is unique in having a flagellate apicoscrobal hair. Strumigenys reflexa has strikingly posteriorly curved pilosity on the lateral clypeal margins that does not occur in pulchella and Strumigenys missouriensis. Both missouriensis and reflexa have stiff stout hairs at the pronotal humeri and on the mesonotal dorsum, whereas in pulchella these hairs are long, fine and flagellate. Elongate filiform or flagellate hairs are entirely absent in Strumigenys memorialis and are even missing from the pronotal humeri and dorsal (outer) surfaces of the posterior tibia and basitarsus. Instead the cephalic dorsum, pronotal dorsum and tibiae have numerous short erect simple hairs that tend to be blunt apically; this pilosity is not repeated elsewhere in the complex or the group as a whole.

Distribution
Canada to USA; in eastern USA from Florida to New York and west to Iowa; in western USA occurs in Kansas, and Texas. The Field Museum houses a specimen from North Dakota (FMHD 0000 050 802), but this specimen’s collection data were digitized erroneously. This specimen was collected by H. Dybas in 1950 near Station Lake, Porter County, Indiana. There are no validated records of Strumigenys in North Dakota (Booher, 2021).

Distribution based on Regional Taxon Lists
Nearctic Region: Canada, United States.

Biology
Wesson and Wesson (1939) - South central Ohio. We have found this species on about 15 occasions, each time in dead wood. A typical habitat seems to be a log or stump or dead portion of a tree trunk, well-decayed for 3 or 4 cm. beneath the bark, moist but not wet, warm but not in full sun. Such desirable situations are almost always inhabited by species of Aphenogaster, Lasius americanus or Camponotus pennsylvanicus. Whether S. pulchella is definitely associated with the other species, as is S. pergandei, or whether it is simply a matter of such a situation being a very favorable one for other reasons, we have not determined. Although we have seldom taken pulchella workers in the frequented galleries of other ants, the colonies have seemed to be much more definitely associated with a larger species than chance alone would account for.

Several times when logs and stumps were broken open pulchella workers were seen carrying dead springtails in their mandibles, and when kept in an artificial nest they readily captured and killed these insects. They would, however, accept bits of dead flies after having been starved for a few days. Their hunting methods are similar to those of S. pergandei, but the workers are less active. They walk less around the galleries and amid the woody debris provided them and often crouch for hours at a cranny. When a springtail approaches, the worker merely lowers its head, turns in the direction of the quarry and waits. Only when the springtail touches the fore part of its head and mandibles does the pulchella snap and seize it. Once a dead springtail was gently pushed close to a waiting pulchella worker. The latter crept up to about the length of its head away, then crouched, holding its antennae partially folded. After waiting in this position for a considerable time, it rose, extended its antennae and vibrated them rapidly, then crouched again. This was repeated two more times before the ant, as if impatient after 3/ of an hour, walked up to the springtail and seized it.

Winged phases were taken from nests in mid August.

Brown (1964) - S. pulchella usually nests in rotten wood at the red or chocolate crumbling stage, and is frequently found in the rot-meal collecting within the hollow bases of trees such as the sycamore.

Nomenclature

 *  pulchella. Strumigenys pulchella Emery, 1895c: 327, pl. 8, fig. 19 (w.) U.S.A. Brown, 1953g: 71 (q.m.). Combination in S. (Cephaloxys): Emery, 1924d: 325; in S. (Trichoscapa): Smith, M.R., 1943f: 307; Creighton, 1950a: 309; in Smithistruma: Smith, M.R. 1951a: 828; Brown, 1953g: 70; in Pyramica: Bolton, 1999: 1673; in Strumigenys: Baroni Urbani & De Andrade, 2007: 126. See also: Bolton, 2000: 122.

Worker
Bolton (2000) - TL 1.9-2.1, HL 0.53-0.61, HW 0.34-0.39, CI 62-66, ML 0.07-0.10, MI 12-17, SL 0.27-0.32, SI 78-82, PW 0.24-0.27, AL 0.53-0.59 (20 measured).

Lateral clypeal margins with a fringe of anteriorly curved spatulate to spoon-shaped hairs. Anterior clypeal margin broadly convex; above the mandible with 2 pairs of hairs that curve away from the midline, the outer pair longer than the pair closest to the midline. (Extremely rarely hairs on anterior cIypeal margin above mandibles point anteriorly, but even so they do not follow the arc of curvature of the laterally situated hairs.) Dorsum of clypeus very shallowly concave, with very small inconspicuous spatulate hairs distributed over the surface. Eye with 3 - 4 ommatidia in longest row. Apicoscrobal hair present, flagellate. Cephalic dorsum behind clypeus with spatulate ground-pilosity and with 1-2 pairs of fine filiform to flagellate hairs behind highest point of vertex. Long fine flagellate hairs also present at pronotal humeri, on dorsa of pronotum and mesonotum (easily abraded), and 1-2 on dorsal (outer) surface of hind basitarsus. On petiole and postpetiole hairs are fine, curved filiform to subflagellate. Hairs on first gastral tergite are shorter and filiform, more or less straight to shallowly curved.

Type Material
Bolton (2000) - Syntype workers, U.S.A. District of Columbia, Washington; and Pennsylvania, Beatty (T. Pergande) [examined].

References based on Global Ant Biodiversity Informatics

 * Annotated Ant Species List Ordway-Swisher Biological Station. Downloaded at http://ordway-swisher.ufl.edu/species/os-hymenoptera.htm on 5th Oct 2010.
 * Belcher A. K., M. R. Berenbaum, and A. V. Suarez. 2016. Urbana House Ants 2.0.: revisiting M. R. Smith's 1926 survey of house-infesting ants in central Illinois after 87 years. American Entomologist 62(3): 182-193.
 * Carroll T. M. 2011. The ants of Indiana (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Master's Thesis Purdue university, 385 pages.
 * Cole A. C., Jr. 1953. A checklist of the ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee. Journal of the Tennessee Academy of Science 28: 34-35.
 * Coovert G. A. 2005. The Ants of Ohio (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Ohio Biological Survey, Inc. 15(2): 1-207.
 * Coovert, G.A. 2005. The Ants of Ohio (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) Ohio Biological Survey Bulletin New Series Volume 15(2):1-196
 * Dash S. T. and L. M. Hooper-Bui. 2008. Species diversity of ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) in Louisiana. Conservation Biology and Biodiversity. 101: 1056-1066
 * Deyrup M. 1998. Smithistruma memorialis (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), a new species of ant from the Kentucky Cumberland Plateau. Entomological News 109: 81-87.
 * Deyrup M., C. Johnson, G. C. Wheeler, J. Wheeler. 1989. A preliminary list of the ants of Florida. Florida Entomologist 72: 91-101
 * Deyrup, M. 2003. An updated list of Florida ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Florida Entomologist 86(1):43-48.
 * Deyrup, M. and S. Cover. 2009. Dacetine Ants in Southeastern North America (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Southeastern Naturalist 8(2):191-212
 * DuBois M. B. 1985. Distribution of ants in Kansas: subfamilies Ponerinae, Ecitoninae, and Myrmicinae (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Sociobiology 11: 153-1253
 * Dubois, M.B. and W.E. Laberge. 1988. An Annotated list of the ants of Illionois. pages 133-156 in Advances in Myrmecology, J. Trager
 * Forster J.A. 2005. The Ants (hymenoptera: Formicidae) of Alabama. Master of Science, Auburn University. 242 pages.
 * Frye J. A., T. Frye, and T. W. Suman. 2014. The ant fauna of inland sand dune communities in Worcester County, Maryland. Northeastern Naturalist, 21(3): 446-471.
 * Ipser R. M. 2004. Native and exotic ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) of Georgia: Ecological Relationships with implications for development of biologically-based management strategies. Doctor of Philosophy thesis, University of Georgia. 165 pages.
 * Ivanov, K. 2019. The ants of Ohio (Hymenoptera, Formicidae): an updated checklist. Journal of Hymenoptera Research 70: 65–87.
 * Ivanov K., L. Hightower, S. T. Dash, and J. B. Keiper. 2019. 150 years in the making: first comprehensive list of the ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) of Virginia, USA. Zootaxa 4554 (2): 532–560.
 * Lynch J. F. 1988. An annotated checklist and key to the species of ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) of the Chesapeake Bay region. The Maryland Naturalist 31: 61-106
 * MacGown J. A., J. G. Hill, R. L. Brown, T. L. Schiefer, J. G. Lewis. 2012. Ant diversity at Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge in Oktibbeha, Noxubee, and Winston Counties, Mississippi. Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station Bulletin 1197: 1-30
 * MacGown J. A., J. G. Hill, and R. L. Brown. 2010.  Native and exotic ant in Mississippi state parks.  Proceedings:  Imported Fire Ant Conference, Charleston, South Carolina, March 24-26, 2008: 74-80.
 * MacGown J. A., and R. L. Brown. 2006. Survey of the ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) of the Tombigbee National Forest in Mississippi. Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society 79(4):325-340.
 * MacGown, J.A and J.A. Forster. 2005. A preliminary list of the ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) of Alabama, U.S.A. Entomological News 116(2):61-74
 * MacGown, J.A. and JV.G. Hill. Ants of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (Tennessee and North Carolina).
 * MacGown, J.A. and R.L. Brown. 2006. Observations on the High Diversity of Native Ant Species Coexisting with Imported Fire Ants at a Microspatial Scale in Mississippi. Southeastern Naturalist 5(4):573-586
 * MacGown, J.A. and R.L. Brown. 2006. Survey of the ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) of the Tombigbee National Forest in Mississippi. Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society 79(4):325-340.
 * MacGown, J.A., J.G. Hill, R.L. Brown and T.L. 2009. Ant Diversity at Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge in Oktibbeha, Noxubee, and Winston Counties, Mississippi Report #2009-01. Schiefer. 2009.
 * MacGown, J.A., R.L. Brown and J.G. Hill. 2005. An Annotated List of the Pyramica (Hymenoptera: Formicidae: Dacetini) of Mississippi. Journal of the Kansas Entomological Societ 78 (3):285-289
 * MacKay W. P. and Anderson R. S. 1993. New distributional records for the ant genus Smithistruma (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) in southern United States. The Southwestern Naturalist 38: 388-389
 * Mahon M. B., K. U. Campbell, and T. O. Crist. 2017. Effectiveness of Winkler litter extraction and pitfall traps in sampling ant communities and functional groups in a temperate forest. Environmental Entomology 46(3): 470–479.
 * Smith M. R. 1931. A revision of the genus Strumigenys of America, north of Mexico, based on a study of the workers (Hymn.: Formicidae). Annals of the Entomological Society of America 24: 686-710.
 * Talbot M. 1976. A list of the ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) of the Edwin S. George Reserve, Livingston County, Michigan. Great Lakes Entomologist 8: 245-246.
 * Van Pelt A. F. 1966. Activity and density of old-field ants of the Savannah River Plant, South Carolina. Journal of the Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society 82: 35-43.
 * Van Pelt A., and J. B. Gentry. 1985. The ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) of the Savannah River Plant, South Carolina. Dept. Energy, Savannah River Ecology Lab., Aiken, SC., Report SRO-NERP-14, 56 p.
 * Wheeler G. C., J. N. Wheeler, and P. B. Kannowski. 1994. Checklist of the ants of Michigan (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). The Great Lakes Entomologist 26(4): 297-310
 * Wheeler, G.C., J. Wheeler and P.B. Kannowski. 1994. CHECKLIST OF THE ANTS OF MICHIGAN (HYMENOPTERA: FORMICIDAE). Great Lakes Entomologist 26:1:297-310