Anochetus are presumably predators, using their snapping mandibles much like their larger relatives, Odontomachus. However, there are few direct observations. A. striatulus nests in the low arboreal zone in wet forest, under epiphytes and in carton nests.
These images show a typical nest (lateral view, 70k, 350k; orange in photos is piece of old trail flagging on sapling; dorsal view, 70k, 350k). The images were taken near the El Ceibo station in Braulio Carrillo National Park in June 2002. The nest was about 1m high on the trunk of a small tree sapling. There was a cluster of epiphyte roots comprised of aroid stems climbing the trunk, and the roots of a large Codonanthe(?) and some other small seedlings. The matrix was composed of vegetation fragments, especially visible on top as a loose pile of small fragments that appeared to be dried stipules or bracts of some kind. The workers came boiling out on disturbance.
Chris Starr and students (pers. comm.) have studied the closely related A. emarginatus in Trinidad, and conclude that it does not have normal winged queens. Instead colonies have gamergates (reproductive workers). I have never collected alate queens of striatulus, and so it is possible that striatulus has a similar reproductive biology.
Costa Rica (Atlantic lowlands). A. emarginatus complex: Belize and Honduras south to Amazonian Brazil, caribbean islands.
Taxonomic history
Subspecies of Anochetus emarginatus: Emery, 1890c PDF: 43; Emery, 1893m PDF: 47 (footnote); Emery, 1894d PDF: 186 (in key); Emery, 1894l PDF: 49; Forel, 1899b PDF: 19; Emery, 1911e PDF: 111; Wheeler, 1925a: 10 (in key); Kempf, 1964f PDF: 238; Kempf, 1972b PDF: 21.Status as species: Dalla Torre, 1893 PDF: 48; Brown, 1978c PDF: 559, 610; Brandão, 1991 PDF: 325; Bolton, 1995b: 65; Zabala, 2008 PDF: 134; Fernández & Guerrero, 2019 PDF: 516.
