A NEW ANT OF THE GENUS AMBLYOPONE 
FROM PANAMA 1 
By William L. Brown, Jr. 
Department of Entomology, Cornell University 
As known before i960, the genus Amblyopone in the New World 
was restricted to temperate North America and the southern half of 
South America. In my i960 review of the Amblyoponini (Bull. Mus. 
Comp. Zool., 122: 143-230) I described as new A. orizabana from 
Mt. Orizaba in southern Mexico, and the aberrant A. mystriops from 
Guatemala. In a very recent paper, Kempf [1961, Studia Ent., Pet- 
ropolis, Brazil (n. s.) 4: 489] has recorded A. degenerata Borgmeier 
— previously known only from southern Brazil — as being collected 
in Surinam). Now, a new species, to be described below, has been 
found in lowland forest on the Isthmus of Panama, closing the last 
significant gap in the distribution of Amblyopone in this hemisphere. 
The genus is now seen to range from British Columbia and, the St. 
Lawrence Valley south into southern Chile, and it seems likely that 
it reaches Tierra del Fuego, even though no specimens have yet come 
in from that far south. Ag it stands, Amblyopone is the most widely 
distributed New World ant genus. While it is clear that the genus is 
very sparsely distributed in the tropics, and that it reaches its best 
development in cool temperate regions to the north and south, it does 
seem likely that further collecting will show it to have a continuous 
or near-continuous range in all but the driest and coldest parts of the 
Americas. 
Amblyopone tropicalis sp. nov. 
Holotype worker: TL 3.0, HL (including clypeal teeth) 0.60, 
HW 0.52 (Cl 87), WL 0.74, petiolar node L 0.26, W 0.35, post- 
petiole W 0.38, scape L 0.34, outside straightline length of mandible 
0.46 mm. ; measurements as in my i960 review. 
Habitus that of the smaller Fulakora > group of Amblyopone, 
especially A. orizabana Brown and A. chilensis Mayr. Head with 
nearly straight (feebly sinuate) occipital border, sides feebly convex, 
diverging anteriad, widest across anterior corners, which are furnished 
3 The work in Panama was supported by a Small Grant from the Milton 
Fund of Harvard University. 
Manuscript received by the editor December 15, 1961. 
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