Pheidole exigua

Wilson, E. O., 2003, Pheidole in the New World. A dominant, hyperdiverse ant genus., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press : 416-417

Pheidole exigua Mayr

Pheidole exigua Mayr 1884: 36. Pheidole flavens subsp. exigua Emery 1894d: 156.

Types Naturhist. Mus. Wien.

Etymology L exigua , small, trifling.

Diagnosis A member of the " flavens complex" within the larger flavens group, which includes asperithorax , breviscapa , exigua , flavens , orbica , and sculptior , and possibly just an extreme variant of flavens . P. exigua is distinguished as follows.

Major: in side and dorsal-oblique views promesonotal profde 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.

Range 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 Para and Pernambuco in Brazil.

biology 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.

Figure Upper: lectotype, major. Lower: paralectotype, minor. FRENCH GUIANA: Cayenne (collected by "M. Jelski," no first name given). Scale bars = 1 mm.