SYNONYMIC AND OTHER NOTES ON 
FORMICIDiE (HYMENOPTERA) * 
By William L. Brown, Jr. 
The Biological Laboratories, Harvard University 
In 1945 Dr. E. Y. Enzmann published a paper entitled 
“Systematic Notes on the Genus Pseudomyrma.” 1 
Since this contains more confused taxonomy per page 
than any other work on the Formicidae I have ever en- 
countered in twelve years of reading in the field, I have 
considered it advisable to publish an account of some 
of the synonymy involved. 
The worst, but by no means the only, category of er- 
rors lies in the series of forms of Pseudomyrma de- 
scribed as new from the types which Wheeler had set up 
in his “Studies of Neotropical Ant-plants and Their 
Ants,” published posthumously in 1942 2 and overlooked 
by Enzmann. 
Wheeler’s types were labelled as types in the usual 
Museum manner, and each series bore Wheeler’s clearly 
legible determination label. Enzmann copied these names 
and used them in his paper, creating a series of synonym- 
homonyms, but since he made several mistakes in tran- 
scribing the spelling, some of the species may be consid- 
ered synonymous but not strictly homonymous. Of the 
remainder of Enzmann ’s publication, much may be 
safely ignored by taxonomists, including the erratic keys 
and the pseudophylogenetic separation into “branches” 
and “groups.” Some forms described as new are from 
sources other than the Wheeler type material; since the 
Enzmannian types have not been made available for 
study, it will devolve upon the future reviser of Pseudo- 
myrma, a genus well-scrambled even in pre-Enzmannian 
times, to decide the fate of the species not treated here. 
The species are listed as Wheeler had them, each with 
the corresponding Enzmannian form beneath it. To 
* Published with a grant from the Museum of Comparative Zoology at 
Harvard College. 
1 Psyche, 51: 59-103, 3 pis. (1945). 
2 Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool. Harvard, 90: 1-262, 56 pis. (1942). 
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