Kilambé

Ants of Reserva Natural Kilambé, Nicaragua

Report by John T. (Jack) Longino, The University of Utah; Michael G. Branstetter, The University of California, Davis; Laura D. Sáenz, Universidad de San Carlos, Guatemala; and P. S. Ward, The University of California, Davis.

This is a working list of the ants of Reserva Natural Kilambé, Nicaragua, 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 74 species so far recorded.

Reserva Natural Kilambé is located in the department of Jinotega east of the small town of Wiwilí. It includes 12,582 ha of protected area and reaches a maximum elevation of 1,750 m. Primary forest occurs above 1,300 m with the lower elevations having been converted mostly to coffee plantations, agricultural fields, and pastureland. The higher elevation habitats are a mixture of montane wet forest and cloud forest. For LLAMA, the reserve was accessed from the southeast via Valle Berlin and the farm of Pedro Blandón. From the Blandón farm we hiked to the edge of the forest, and from there it was a ten-minute hike up to a ridge marking the beginning of primary forest. MiniWinkler transects were done in primary forest on top of the ridge. The forest was very wet and has an above average density of large tree ferns. The transects were located between 1400 and 1500 m elevation with transect 2 being closer to the edge of the forest. Additional leaf litter samples were collected from the transect sites up to a local high point called Cerro Hielo, which reaches 1,620 m.