VoUiinc III, dumber i 



THE TACHIGALIA ANTS 

 By William Morton Wheeler 



The early botanists Aublet (1775) and Spruce (1869, 1908), 

 who first observed and collected Tachigalia in the forests of the 

 Guianas and adjacent regions mentioned ants as inhabiting the 

 swollen petioles but made no effort to have the species identified. 

 As we have seen, Aublet coined the name of the plant from 

 "tachi," the general native-name for the stinging ants of the 

 genus Psendomyrma. The white settlers of British Guiana call 

 them "long John ants," but since the term "long John" is applied 

 to the trees of the genus Triplaris, the "palo santo" of the Latin 

 Americans, I have been unable to ascertain whether the name 

 of the tree is derived from that of the ant or vice versa, for the 

 tree is very tall and slender and the ants which inhabit its 

 cavities are long and narrow. "Tachi," which is also used by 

 the natives of Brazil for various species of Pseudomynna, would 

 seem to be the best name to introduce into the vernacular for all 

 the species of Pseudomyrma. 



For more precise knowledge of the ant-fauna of Tachigalia 

 we are indebted to Ule (1907), who carefully collected the ants 

 of this and many other myrmecophytes and turned them over 

 to Forel to describe. In 1904 the eminent Swiss myrmecologist 

 published a comprehensive paper on Ule's material, comprising 

 ants from various species of the following genera of myrmeco- 

 phytes : Tococa, Maieta, Pseudocatopsis, Triplaris, Sapium, 

 Cordia, Coussapoa, Duroia, Tachigalia, Platymischium, Pterocar- 

 pus, Pterocladon, Schwartzia and a peculiar Polypodium-Mke 

 fern. He described, however, only two ants from Tachigalia, 

 Pseudoviyrma latinoda Mayr subsp. tachigalia}, from the petioles 

 and flower-bearing branches of Tachigalia formicarum Harms 

 (Plate I.), collected by Ule at Tarapoto, Amazonas, and Azteca 

 tacliigalise from the petioles of an undetermined Tachigalia from 

 Cerro de Escaler, in the mountains of Peru. Forel (1906) also 

 recorded the Ps. tachigalise from the upper Rio Purus, Amazonas 



