Pyramica sp. ir-golestan-01 and ir-ghaemshahr- 01

Paknia, O., Radchenko, A. & Pfeiffer, M., 2010, New records of ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) from Iran., Asian Myrmecology 3, pp. 29-38 : 34

Pyramica sp. ir-golestan-01 and ir-ghaemshahr- 01 (argiola-group)

Material: 1 $, Caspian Hyrcanian mixed forests, Ghaemshahr (36°22'16''N, 52°50'53''E), 155 m asl., 4.VI.2008, leg. Omid Paknia .; 1 $, Caspian Hyrcanian mixed forests, Golestan National Park (37°24'04''N, 55°48'04''E), 520 m asl, 11.VI.2008, leg. Omid Paknia .

Remarks: In the last ten years, the systematics of the tribe Dacetini , to which Pyramica Roger belongs, was cardinally changed. First of all, Bolton (1999) revived the name Pyramica from synonymy and proposed to consider it as a senior synonym of more than 20 generic names. A year later, he published a huge taxonomic revision of this tribe, describing several hundred new species (Bolton 2000). As a result, Pyramica is now one of the world 's biggest ant genera that includes more than 300 species; its range encompasses the whole world, with the overwhelming majority of species distributed in the tropics. This genus is new to Iran.

Several Pyramica species were recorded from the Mediterranean region of Europe and Africa, the Middle East, Anatolia and the Transcaucasus, while it is not yet known from Central Asia (e.g., Arakelyan & Dlussky 1991; Arakelyan 1994; Bolton et al. 2006; Radchenko 2007).

It is necessary to note that in the latest revision of the tribe Dacetini (Baroni Urbani & De Andrade 2007) , the name Pyramica is considered a junior synonym of Strumigenys , but in this paper, we retain Pyramica until there is a definitive opinion on this question.