Notes on Formica (Neoformica) Moki Wheeler, with Description of a New Subspecies

Abstract

Recently I received for determination three workers and four callows of an undescribed ant closely related to Formica moki Wheeler. These specimens were collected by Falconer Smith at Leaven worth, Wash., in an arid region somewhat similar to the regions in which live our honey ants, Myrmecocystus spp. The similarity of appearance is indeed very striking between certain species of Myrmecocystus, Formica moki, and the new subspecies. Wheeler was so puzzled as to the proper subgeneric assignment of moki that he at first placed the species in the rufa group of the typical subgenus, and later transferred it to the subgenus Neoformica Wheeler. The cotypes of moki were collected in the Grand Canyon of Arizona at an altitude of 5,000 to 7,000 feet (Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist. 22: 343–344, 1900). The uncertainty regarding the correct systematic position of moki is shown in the following quotation from Wheeler: “This species seems to belong to the Formica rufa group although certain characters ally it with F.fusca. At first sight it resembles rather deeply colored specimens of the variety neoclara Emery of the latter species, but differs from this and all the other North American Formicae known to me in the very low and flat thorax and the length of the mesoepinotal constriction. In these respects it approaches the forms of the pallide-fulva group, but the surface of the body is subopaque as in the smaller species allied to F. rufa. It will be impossible to assign moki to a precise position until the female is discovered.”