1985] 
Wilson — Dominican amber ants. 3 
29 
A 
Fig. 7. Azteca alpha queen (tentative association). A, head; B, side view of body. 
rence of A. alpha in pieces from almost all of the identified mines to 
date (the only exceptions are El Valle and Palo Alto) is evidence 
that at least the bulk of the Dominican ant fauna is relatively cohe- 
sive and did not stretch over a very long period of geological time. 
The frequent occurrence of large numbers of A. azteca workers in 
the same amber piece, in a few cases 50 or more, also suggests that 
the species foraged in groups or at least recruited groups to food 
sources or enemies. Such behavior characterizes contemporaneous 
species of Azteca. So far as known all of the living Azteca species 
are arboreal, foraging onto the ground only secondarily, and it is 
reasonable to suppose this was true of A. alpha as well. In addition, 
at least some of the modern members of the alfari group are special- 
ized for life on the moraceous tree Cecropia (Wheeler, 1942). What 
this means for A. alfari, whose workers were trapped in the gum of 
the leguminous tree Hymenaea courbaril (locust tree or “algar- 
robo”) is unclear. 
I have not excluded the possibility that more than one species 
exists in the large quantity of material placed with A. alpha. Many 
