338 
Psyche 
[December 
undulating country with sandy soil. Although the forest was very 
dark and did not appear to be seriously disturbed , we found few 
really large trees, and there were many spiny palms in the under- 
growth. Probably the area had been selectively logged (26 August, 
1962, W. L. Brown, Jr. leg.). 
Workers and soldiers (labeled “BF”) were also taken in leaf- 
litter berlesates from the vicinity of Igarape Marianil during the 
same month, and the other paratypes (M-60) came from partially 
newly cut hillside rain forest near kilometer 50 on the western side 
of Amazonas Ruta 1 (24 August 1962, Brown leg.). The M-60 
ants were nesting in a small spongy piece of rotten branch (without 
bark) on the forest floor. The soil was sandy, with thin litter, and 
the country looked very much like that at Igarape Marianil, about 
30 km to the west. The phragmotic nature of neither queen was 
noticed until after they had been captured, and so no particular note 
was made of their behavior or position within the nests. 
Paratypes are deposited with the holotype and in the collections 
of W. W. Kempf and Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. 
Pheidole embolopyx appears to belong to the triconstricta group, 
but the color and sculpture of the soldier, as well as the narrowly- 
rounded occiput of the worker minor, will separate the new species 
from the several forms clustered around P. triconstricta and P. 
radoszkowskii. The types have been compared with all likely related 
species in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, the W. W. Kempf 
(ex-Borgmeier) Collection, and several of the principal European 
ant collections, and are thought to be distinct. The queen is of course 
unique in form among Pheidole known from this caste, but for most 
New World members of trhe genus, the queen remains undescribed. 
After all is said and done, P. embolopyx may eventually end in the 
synonymy of some named species I have not taken into account. 
Certainly, the known described and undescribed New-World species 
of Pheidole number in the hundreds, and they remain unrevised. 
The biological interest of this particular species dictated that it should 
be described without further delay, regardless of the small risk that 
it might turn out to have received a name previously. 
acknowledgements 
Thanks are due Dr. Djalma Batista and the Instituto Nacional de 
Pesquisas da Amazonia, for hospitality and transportation during the 
collecting period at Manaus in 1962; Dr. Frances McKittrick for aid 
with the drawings; Dr. Walter W. Kempf, OFM, for searching his 
