PSYCHE 
Vol. 74 
September, 1967 
No. 3 
TATUIDRIS , A REMARKABLE NEW GENUS 
OF FORMICIDAE 
(HYMENOPTERA) 
By William L. Brown, Jr. 1 and Walter W. Kempf 2 
Introduction 
The two remarkable ant specimens we describe below were sent 
to us originally by Mr. R. R. Snelling of the Los Angeles County 
Museum of Natural History in California. After prolonged study, 
we concluded that they represent a genus and species of Myrmicinae 
certainly very unlike any ants previously described, and that they 
could not reasonably be included in any living formicid tribe so 
far known. True, this new ant shares some striking habitus char- 
acters with certain Dacetini ( Glamyromyrmex , Gymnomyrmex) , and 
also with the anomalous Phalacromyrmex (Kempf i960), but analy- 
sis of these similarities indicates to us that they are mostly convergent 
and not based on close phylogenetic relationship. 
In addition to comparisons with living ant genera, we checked 
through some likely fossil groups. Our attention soon came to rest 
on the primitive myrmicine genus Agroecomyrmex , of the Oligocene 
Baltic Amber (Wheeler 1914). We believe that our new genus and 
Agroecotnyrmex, while at first sight very unlike each other, are 
nevertheless linked by some fundamental resemblances that we shall 
cite below in the tribal diagnosis and ensuing discussion. In fact, 
we feel that the two genera should be placed together in the same 
tribe. This tribe is already available in Carpenter’s (1930) Agroe- 
comyrmicini, raised to receive A groecomyrmex and his then new 
department of Entomology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. 
Partial report on studies supported by National Science Foundation Grant 
GB-5574X. 
2 Provincialado dos Franciscanos, Caixa Postal 5.650, Sao Paulo, Brazil. 
Research supported by a fellowship from the Conselho Nacional de Pes- 
quisas do Brasil. 
Manuscript received by the editor August 20, 1967 
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