Abstract
The location of Nepal in the Central Himalaya promotes high habitat and species diversity. Ant diversity is likely high, but there have been few studies of the diversity and distribution of ants in Nepal. Here we present an updated checklist list of Nepalese ants that includes 128 named species in 48 genera and eight subfamilies. Among these species, 21 species have a type locality from Nepal, nine species are endemic to Nepal, and three are introduced species. We add six new ant records for Nepal, namely Harpegnathos venator, Monomorium pharaonis, Nylanderia bourbonica, Odontoponera denticulata, Polyrhachis tyrannica and Pseudoneoponera bispinosa. The checklist presents distribution records for Nepalese ant species and provides comparisons with the neighboring countries of China and India.
Highlights
Ants are one of the most successful groups of organisms on the planet (Hölldobler and Wilson 1990) and together with termites, have been found to make up 30% of animal biomass in the Amazon rain forest (Fittkau and Klinge 1973)
The ant genus Harpegnathos is recorded for the first time for Nepal
No ant genera are known to be endemic to Nepal
Summary
Ants (family Formicidae) are one of the most successful groups of organisms on the planet (Hölldobler and Wilson 1990) and together with termites, have been found to make up 30% of animal biomass in the Amazon rain forest (Fittkau and Klinge 1973). Indra Prasad Subedi et al / ZooKeys 1006: 99–136 (2020). Ness exceeds 20,000 species (Hölldobler and Wilson 1990). 337 genera, and over 13,837 species of ants have been described (Bolton 2020). Over 87% of all described ant species belong to four main subfamilies: Myrmicinae, Formicinae, Ponerinae, and Dolichoderinae (Guénard 2013). Global Ant Biodiversity Informatics (GABI) is the first comprehensive global database with ant species records in available publications and existing databases (Guénard et al 2017)
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