Guisayote

Ants of Reserva Biológica El Guisayote, Honduras

Report by John T. Longino, The University of Utah.

This is a working list of the ants of the cloud forests of Reserva Biológica El Guisayote, Honduras, based on Project LLAMA sampling. Specimen records have been uploaded to the AntWeb database and are periodically updated.

This is a static webpage with links to the AntWeb species pages, where you can see distribution maps on Google Earth. If links are dead, that means the database has changed as hypotheses of species boundaries evolve and names change.

There is a minimum of 24 species so far recorded.

Guisayote is a cloud forest site that is between 2000 and 2400m elevation. At this elevation in Central America ants are at the upper limit of their occurrence, with low density and diversity. However, many of the species that occur there are mountain-top specialists that only occur above 2000m and are restricted to nuclear Central America (Chiapas, Guatemala, Honduras, northern Nicaragua). Examples at Guisayote include Adelomyrmex micans, Discothyrea JTL007, Perissomyrmex snyderi, and several species of Stenamma. Guisayote is home to the southernmost population of P. snyderi. This is the only species of this distinctive genus in the New World, and it occurs as a series of relatively few disjunct populations on mountain-tops from southern Mexico to Honduras. In general the ant species of Guisayote are restricted to a few mountain-top reserves in Central America. They are among the species most at risk of extinction due to habitat loss and climate change. For this reason Guisayote is an important refuge for these elements of the Central American montane biota.

Acromyrmex coronatus

Adelomyrmex micans

Adelomyrmex silvestrii

Brachymyrmex

Hypoponera

Perissomyrmex snyderi

Pheidole bilimeki

Pheidole guerrerana