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)

Distribution based on Regional Taxon Lists
Neotropical Region: Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, French Guiana, Greater Antilles, Guadeloupe, Guyana, Mexico, Netherlands Antilles, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela.

Worker
Minor

Images from AntWeb
Major

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
FRENCH GUIANA: Cayenne (collected by "M. Jelski," no first name given). - as reported in Wilson (2003)

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

References based on Global Ant Biodiversity Informatics

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 * Emery C. 1894. Studi sulle formiche della fauna neotropica. VI-XVI. Bullettino della Società Entomologica Italiana 26: 137-241.
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 * Galkowski C. 2016. New data on the ants from the Guadeloupe (Hymenoptera, Formicidae). Bull. Soc. Linn. Bordeaux 151, 44(1): 25-36.
 * Gregg R. E. 1959. Key to the species of Pheidole (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) in the United States. Journal of the New York Entomological Society 66: 7-48.
 * Kempf, W.W. 1972. Catalago abreviado das formigas da regiao Neotropical (Hym. Formicidae) Studia Entomologica 15(1-4).
 * LaPolla, J.S. and S.P. Cover. 2005. New species of Pheidole (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) from Guyana, with a list of species known from the country. Tranactions of the American Entomological Society 131(3-4):365-374
 * Radoszkowsky O. 1884. Fourmis de Cayenne Française. Trudy Russkago Entomologicheskago Obshchestva 18: 30-39.
 * Reyes J.L. 2005. Inventario de la coleccion de hormigas (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) del centro oriental de ecosistemas y biodiversidad, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba. Boletín Sociedad Entomológica Aragonesa 36: 279-283.
 * Reyes, J. L. "Inventario de la colección de hormigas (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) del Centro Oriental de Ecosistemas y Biodiversidad, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba." Boletín de la Sociedad Aragonesa 36 (2005): 279-283.
 * Torres J.A. 1984. Niches and Coexistence of Ant Communities in Puerto Rico: Repeated Patterns. Biotropica 16(4): 284-295.
 * Torres, Juan A. and Roy R. Snelling. 1997. Biogeography of Puerto Rican ants: a non-equilibrium case?. Biodiversity and Conservation 6:1103-1121.
 * Vasconcelos, H.L. and J.M.S. Vilhena. 2006. Species turnover and vertical partitioning of ant assemblages in the Brazilian Amazon: A comparison of forests and savannas. Biotropica 38(1):100-106.
 * Vasconcelos, H.L., J.M.S. Vilhena, W.E. Magnusson and A.L.K.M. Albernaz. 2006. Long-term effects of forest fragmentation on Amazonian ant communities. Journal of Biogeography 33:1348-1356
 * Wheeler W. M. 1908. The ants of Porto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 24: 117-158.
 * Wheeler W. M. 1916. Ants collected in British Guiana by the expedition of the American Museum of Natural History during 1911. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 35: 1-14.
 * Wilson, E.O. 2003. Pheidole in the New World: A Dominant, Hyperdiverse Genus. Harvard University Press