No. 17 — The Ants of Cuba. 1 

 By William Morton Wheeler. 



Myrmecologists have been inclined to assume that Cuba, as the 

 largest of the Antilles, would yield, on careful exploration, a large 

 and interesting ant-fauna. I, too, shared this opinion, although 

 I had found that Porto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the Bahamas and 

 Jamaica are very far from being as rich in species as equal areas of 

 Central and tropical South America. But a visit of a few weeks to 

 Cuba, in company with Dr. Thomas Barbour and Mr. L. A. Shaw, 

 during January and February, 1913, has convinced me that Cuba, 

 in proportion to its size, must be even poorer in ants than Jamaica, 

 Porto Rico, and Haiti. 2 



Guerin (1845) and Mayr (1862) were the first to record a few ants 

 from Cuba, but a much larger series was described by Roger in 1863. 

 His specimens were collected by the celebrated Juan Gundlach, but 

 no precise data that might guide the future collector to the type 

 localities, were recorded. Within more recent years a few species or 

 varieties have been added by Forel and Santschi. 



On arriving in Havana I had the pleasure of meeting the talented 

 Cuban naturalist Prof. Carlos de la Torre y Huerta, who very kindly 

 helped me to an appreciation of Gundlach's work. He not only 

 loaned me the manuscript note-book of Gundlach in his possession, 

 but also conducted me to this naturalist's collection in the Istituto de 

 Seconda Ensefianza and secured for me copies of two publications 

 containing valuable data on the Cuban ants. These papers comprise 

 the second part ("Hymenopteros") of Gundlach's work on the insects 

 of Cuba and the "Catalogo Numerico del Museo Zoologico Cubano 

 (Museo Gundlach)," published by A. Alvarez y Comp. Havana, 1895. 

 With the aid of these papers and the note-book above mentioned 

 I have been able to ascertain the precise localities in which many of 

 Roger's types were collected. It appears that Gundlach sent a second 

 lot of ants to Roger and that this myrmecologist died before he could 

 study or return them. A few of them, as indicated by the remark 



1 Contributions from the Entomological laboratory of the Bussey institution, 

 Harvard University, No. 66. 



2 Mr. W. M. Mann has recently made a very fine collection of ants in Haiti. We 

 hope to be able to describe and list these in the near future. 



