PSEUDOMYRMEX APACHE, A NEW SPECIES FROM 
THE SOUTHWESTERN UNITED STATES 
( HYMENOPTERA : FORMICID AE ) 1 
By William S. Creighton 
Department of Biology, College of the City of New York 
The majority of the material on which this paper is based 
was secured during 1951 and 1952. At that time the writer 
was engaged in a field survey of the ants of the border 
region. This work was made possible by a fellowship from 
the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. My 
sincere thanks go to the Foundation for the support which 
made this work possible. 
The taxonomy of the genus Pseudomyrmex presents an 
unusual number of difficulties. Even the generic name has 
not escaped the hazard of uncertainty. The name Pseudo - 
myrma , which has been accepted for more than a century, 
has recently been challenged. Twice in the past two years 
Dr. M. R. Smith has introduced prior names for the genus. 
The latest choice is Pseudomyrmex Lund which, on the 
basis of data presented by Dr. Smith in 1952 (Proc. Ent. 
Soc. Wash., Vol. 54, No. 2, p. 97) has a priority of thirteen 
years over Pseudomyrma Guerin. But any difficulty with 
the generic name is a minor matter in contrast to the de- 
plorable incertitude which marks a large number of the 
species in this genus. The taxonomy of many of them is 
in such confusion that specific recognition is largely a 
matter of guess-work. With this fact in mind, the writer 
has hesitated for some time to describe the material treated 
here. It would seem, however, that we can no longer avoid 
dealing with this material for, whatever its taxonomic 
status may be, it is certain that its presence in the south- 
western United States has not previously been recognized. 
It is probable that the older records for this ant have been 
attributed to Ps. pallida. The two insects are superficially 
1 Published with a grant from the Museum of Comparative Zoology 
at Harvard College. 
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