Source and Additional Information

AntWeb
 
John T. Longino
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My field observations in Costa Rica, Colombia, and Venezuela suggest that this species prefers open disturbed habitats. Many collections are from roadside vegetation, pasture edges, and young second growth forest. Perfecto collected the species in an area of hurricane-flattened forest on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua. The species occurs in wet and seasonally dry climates. My highest elevational record is 1000m in Bolivia, but most records are from below 500m. Colonies are very large, but not high density, and the species is only occasionally encountered.

I have observed nests on four different occasions, and each time they have been large, polydomous colonies nesting in dead wood. One nest was in dead Piper stems, one in chambers in fence posts along a fencerow, one in dead Cecropia branches, and one in the exposed dead core of a living tree trunk. In this last example, the dead part was dry and brittle, and one section was riddled with holes and filled with workers. There were few large chambers, and the workers seemed distributed evenly, like filling the spaces of a sponge. In addition to workers there were abundant alate females scattered throughout the wood, and I found a single male. There was very little brood. I could only excavate a small portion of the dead trunk, and it looked as though the colony continued up the side of the tree and deep into the dead core.

Workers have been collected by sweeping during the day and at night, and they have been collected at tuna baits. In Peru, Davidson has observed them foraging on the ground and invading myrmecophytic Triplaris trees. When nests are disturbed workers emerge in great numbers, wave their gasters in the air, and exude copious quantities of a white frothy material from the tip of the gaster. However, they rarely bite.

Nothing is known of colony founding, but queens exhibit a morphology often associated with social parasitism.