Tetramorium jarawa

Tetramorium jarawa is currently only known from its type locality on Havelock Island, in the Andaman Islands archipelago. Given the relatively small size of the island and its proximity to one of the bigger islands of the archipelago, it may be speculated that the species will be present on other islands of the archipelago as well. Tetramorium jarawa was collected from leaf-litter in an undisturbed patch of evergreen forest. In the island-wide ant diversity survey done using Winkler transects (80 m length, 5 x 1m2 leaf-litter collected in each transect), the species was found only in one out of 22 transects in evergreen forests. It thus appears to be rare and restricted to the inland evergreen forests, as it was not found in coastal forests and other disturbed habitats of the island despite considerable sampling effort. If, as mentioned above, this species has indeed a termitophagous, cryptic lifestyle in close proximity to termites, this would explain its rarity in collections.

Distribution based on Regional Taxon Lists
Oriental Region: India.

Nomenclature

 *  jarawa. Tetramorium jarawa Agavekar, Hita Garcia & Economo, 2017: 25, figs. 13E, 13G, 13I, 14F, 15, 16 (w.) INDIA.