Pseudomyrmex cubaensis (Forel 1901)

In the Caribbean region, colonies of P. cubaensis occupy dead stems of various woody and herbaceous plants (Ward, 1985), often in littoral environments. Mainland populations come from a variety of habitats, including tropical dry forest, savannah, roadside verge, second-growth lowland rain forest, rain forest edge and montane rain forest edge. Nesting habits of these mainland populations are probably also generalized, but unfortunately most records consist of foraging workers rather than nest series.

Pseudomyrmex cubaensis is distributed from southeastern United States (Florida), the Caribbean and Mexico, south to Argentina.

Among members of the oculatus group (see Ward, 1989), workers of cubaensis can be recognized by the following combination of features:medium size (HW 0.65-0.78)punctate-sublucid head; at least some punctures separated by half their diameters or more, especially between the ocelli and compound eye, and immediately posterior to compound eyerelatively short eyes (REL2 0.65-0.76)moderately broad fore femur (FI 0.41-0.50)petiole with rounded dorsolateral margination

Pseudomyrma elongata var. cubaensis Forel, 1901j PDF: 342 (w.) CUBA. Neotropic. AntCat AntWiki HOL

Taxonomic history

Forel, 1913m PDF: 215 (q.); Wheeler & Wheeler, 1956 PDF: 384 (l., misidentified as Pseudomyrmex elongatus).Combination in Pseudomyrmex: Creighton, 1957b PDF: 18.Subspecies of Pseudomyrmex elongatus: Wheeler, 1905c PDF: 123; Forel, 1907h PDF: 7; Forel, 1913m PDF: 215; Wheeler, 1913b PDF: 484; Wheeler & Mann, 1914 PDF: 18; Mann, 1920b PDF: 405; Emery, 1921c PDF: 32; Alayo, 1974 PDF: 9 (in key).Junior synonym of Pseudomyrmex elongatus: Creighton, 1957b PDF: 18; Kempf, 1972b PDF: 218; Smith, 1979: 1346.Status as species: Ward, 1985b PDF: 226 (redescription); Ward, 1989a PDF: 413 (redescription); Deyrup et al., 1989 PDF: 94; Brandão, 1991 PDF: 374; Ward, 1992 PDF: 80 (in table); Bolton, 1995b: 372; Deyrup, 2003 PDF: 46; Wild, 2007b PDF: 40; Branstetter & Sáenz, 2012 PDF: 264; Bezděčková et al., 2015 PDF: 125; Deyrup, 2017: 40; Lubertazzi, 2019 10.3099/MCZ-43.1 PDF: 163; Ward, 2019 PDF: 1103.