Pseudomyrmex gracilis

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Pseudomyrmex gracilis
Pseudomyrmex cf. gracilis-Arbeiterin
Systematik
Unterfamilie: Pseudomyrmecinae Gattung: Pseudomyrmex Art: Pseudomyrmex gracilis
Weitere Informationen
Verbreitung: Süd-, Mittel- und Nordamerika, von Argentinien bis Karibik und Florida. Andernorts invasiv.
Wissenschaftlicher Name
Pseudomyrmex gracilis (Fabricius, 1804)

Vorläufiger Text:

The Mexican twig or elongate twig ant, P. gracilis (Figure 1) has a widespread distribution from Argentina and Brazil to southern Texas and the Caribbean (Ward 1993, Wetterer and Wetterer 2003). This species is exotic elsewhere in the United States, only being reported from Florida, Hawaii, and Louisiana. It was first reported in Florida from Dade County in 1960 (Whitcomb et al. 1972), and since then it has spread throughout much of the state (Wetterer and Wetterer 2003). This species has been known to occur in Louisiana only since the mid 1990s, but since that time it has been collected in several of the southern parishes (Dash 2005). It was first collected in Oahu, Hawaii in 1976 (Beardsley 1979). Photographs of this species taken in Pearl River County, Mississippi during 2009 were posted on an insect identification website (Ott 2010), although specimens were not collected nor vouchered in a museum.

Workers of P. gracilis are large (8–10 mm), slender, bicolored orange and black, with large eyes, abundant erect setae, an elongate two-segmented waist, and a well-developed sting (Ward 1985). This species is easily distinguished from other Nearctic Pseudomyrmex species by its large size and bicolored orange and black appearance. This species can inflict a painful sting, but is not particularly aggressive.

MacGown, J. A. and J. G. Hill 2010: Two New Exotic Pest Ants, Pseudomyrmex gracilis and Monomorium floricola (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) Collected in Mississippi. - Midsouth Entomologist 3, 106-109 [pdf] http://midsouthentomologist.org.msstate.edu/Volume3/Vol3_2_html_files/Vol3_2_007.html

Medizinische Bedeutung

Pseudomyrmex gracilis hat ein sehr wirksames Stachelgift und sticht sehr schnell zu, wenn sie mit dem menschlichen Körper in Kontakt kommt.

Hier ist ein Blog mit lebhaften Beschreibungen der Folgen von Stichen. Der Blog handelt zwar zunächst von einer anderen, harmloseren Art (P. ejectus), enthält aber überwiegend Angaben zu P. gracilis: http://www.myrmecos.net/2010/12/19/elongate-twig-ants-pseudomyrmex-ejectus/comment-page-1/#comment-20044