This species is common and, with its bright red head, conspicuous in the Atlantic lowland rainforests of Costa Rica. It inhabits mature forest, foraging on the ground and low vegetation, and nesting in rotten wood on the ground or rotten stumps. In one case I was collecting at the edge of an old lava field on Volcan Arenal, an area of boulders and open sand, with very little vegetation. A populous colony was under a stone in a narrow strip of grass.
Costa Rica to W. Ecuador (Brown 1976). Costa Rica: Atlantic slope wet forest to 700m elevation, from Cordillera de Guanacaste to the Talamancas.
Taxonomic history
[Also described as new by Emery, 1894l PDF: 50.].Forel, 1914e: 9 (q.); Wheeler & Wheeler, 1952c PDF: 650 (l.); Brown, 1976a: 144 (m.).Subspecies of Odontomachus haematodus: Emery, 1893m PDF: 50 (footnote); Forel, 1899b PDF: 21; Forel, 1907h PDF: 1; Emery, 1911e PDF: 115; Forel, 1914e: 9.Status as species: Dalla Torre, 1893 PDF: 50; Kempf, 1972b PDF: 7, 170; Brown, 1976c PDF: 103, 144; Brandão, 1991 PDF: 363; Bolton, 1995b: 295; Rodriguez, 2008 PDF: 162; Guénard & Economo, 2015 10.11646/zootaxa.4040.2.8: 228; Fernández & Guerrero, 2019 PDF: 539.
