Cyphomyrmex vorticis Weber

Snelling, R. R. & Longino, J. T., 1992, Revisionary notes on the fungus-growing ants of the genus Cyphomyrmex, rimosus-group (Hymenoptera: Formicidae: Attini)., Insects of Panama and Mesoamerica: selected studies., Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 479-494 : 493

Cyphomyrmex vorticis Weber

Cyphomyrmex vorticis Weber , 1940:409-10; [[worker]]. Kempf, 1966:188-90.

Kempf (1966) reported this species only from Bolivia (Santa Helena, the type locality) and Brazil. We have seen a series of 9 workers, 2 females, and 1 male from Zent, costa rica, collected in March, 1924 by W. M. Mann (USNM). The workers agree well with Kempfs redescription, and with cotypes in the LACM, in all particulars except the pilosity. The appressed pilosity of the head and body is fine and hair-like in the cotypes and is very inconspicuous. The Zent specimens differ in having more conspicuous, though no more abundant, pilosity because the individual hairs are broad and scale-like.

Whether or not these represent a variant of C. vorticis , or an undescribed species, is uncertain. More material of both forms, as well as samples from intervening localities, must be available before the status of the Costa Rican specimens is clear. For the present they are tentatively assigned to C. vorticis .