OBSERVATIONS ON GIGANTIOPS DESTRUCTOR FABRICIUS AND OTHER LEAPING ANTS

Abstract

In any study of the very exuberant ant-fauna of the Neotropical Region one can not fail to be impressed by the striking contrast between certain genera like Eciton, Pseudomyrma, Solenopsis, Crematogaster, Cryptocercus, Azteca, and Camponotus, each represented by a large number of variable species, and genera like Paraponera, Acanthognathus, Daceton, Blepharidatta, Stegomyrmex, and Gigantiops, each represented by a single, very stable species. Of course, such monotypic groups may be regarded either as very ancient, embracing during some former age many species of which only one has survived, or as single species which, after acquiring generic status in the remote past, have since undergone little or no modification. The individuals of a species representing a monotypic genus may be either very rare or local, mere relicts of a bygone age, or prominent and ubiquitous over larger geographical areas. This is true of such ants as Paraponera clavata Fabr. and Gigantiops destructor, which I have recently had abundant opportunity to study in the jungle about the Tropical Laboratory of the New York Zoological Society at Kartabo, British Guiana. As the latter species is the more imperfectly known, I have singled it out for special consideration. The name Gigantiops destructor conjures up visions of a hugeeyed, insatiable monster, a kind of Cyclopean insect-jaguar. Fabricius, when he first described the insect in I804 as Formica destructor, certainly knew nothing of its behavior and probably gave it what seemed to him an appropriate specific name for any ant measuring a centimeter in length. More than half a century later ('58) Frederick Smith received specimens taken by Bates at Ega, Brazil, and believed them to represent a new species which he described as Formica solitaria. The following note was appended