Notes from Underground:needed

Notes from
Underground

Pest ant records wanted

Please send me any or all of your Anoplolepis gracilipes records. I have started to make a worldwide list of every record I can find for eight major pest ant species (also L. humile, P. longicornis, P. megacephala, S. geminata, S. invicta, T. albipes, and W. auropunctata), adding latitude, longitude, and sometime elevation for each. I have close to a complete country list for all eight and now I am filling in the ranges within countries. I have W. auropunctata fairly well done and I am concentrating now on A. gracilipes. What has particularly aroused my interest in A. gracilipes is the fact that it is considered an exotic everywhere it occurs. In a recent paper on the ants of Tonga, I followed Wilson and Taylor (1967) in calling it of African origin, but I have found only one record of it on mainland Africa, in Durban, South Africa, where it is considered an exotic from India. In India, several authors say it occurs throughout the country, but all sites records I have found come only from the three southernmost states. Three countries where I am sure it is found, but for which I have no records are Maldives, Bangla Desh, and Laos. Does anyone know any papers with ant records from these three countries? Anyway, I would greatly appreciate your records (with site, date, and collector information) for any of the eight species I am working on, but particularly A. gracilipes? I will look up latitude and longitude for all and send you back this information. If you are interested, I would be happy to send you the list of what I have so far.

Thanks.
Jim Wetterer

James K. Wetterer
Associate Professor
Honors College
Florida Atlantic University
5353 Parkside Drive
Jupiter, FL 33458
email: wetterer@fau.edu
561-799-8648
FAX 561-799-8602