﻿Japanese Tetramorium queens: identification key and species diagnoses (Hymenoptera, Formicidae, Myrmicinae).

Seiki Yamane,Shingo Hosoishi,Fuminori Ito

doi:10.3897/zookeys.1084.69767

Abstract

In Japan, nine species have been known in the ant genus Tetramorium, of which five or more are considered tramps. A key to the queens of nine Tetramorium species found in Japan is presented. The tramp species T.tonganum Mayr, 1870 is excluded from the key because no queen was available for us, while T.pacificum Mayr, 1870 is included because it was once intercepted at a port in Japan and exotic queens were available. Diagnosis of the queen of each species is provided together with differences between the two female castes. Tetramoriumtanakai Bolton, 1977 is resurrected from synonymy with T.kraepelini Forel, 1905 based mainly on the queen characters.

Highlights

Tetramorium Mayr, 1855 is a large ant genus containing slightly less than 600 species worldwide, with very few native species in the New World (AntWiki 2021)
This paper is the first attempt to prepare a key to Japanese Tetramorium species, based on the queen and to give morphological diagnoses for them
Material is still very poor; only one or two queens were available for two species, i.e. T. cf. kraepelini and T. tanakai

Summary

Introduction

Tetramorium Mayr, 1855 is a large ant genus containing slightly less than 600 species worldwide, with very few native species in the New World (AntWiki 2021). Some species are common, encountered during most field surveys on ant species diversity and some others are tramps spreading over non-native areas. In spite of their ubiquity, the nesting biology of Tetramorium species has not been studied well and many species are known only from the worker caste. Tetramorium tanakai Bolton, 1977 was synonymized with T. kraepelini Forel, 1905 by Japan Ant Database Group (2003), it is highly probable that it is a good species and it is resurrected from synonymy in the present paper. Species accounts for the known Tetramorium fauna of Japan are given by Terayama et al (2014), based on the worker caste, but information about the queen and male is still very poor even for common species. This paper is the second part of ‘the queens of the Japanese ants’ series; the first part dealt with the genus Pheidole (Yamane and Hosoishi 2020)

Materials and methods

Discussion