Vollenhovia minuta Viehmeyer, 1916

Hamer, Matthew T., Lee, Jonathan Hon Chung, Tse, Cheung Yau Leo, Silva, Thiago S. R. & Guénard, Benoit, 2022, Remarkable diversity in a little red dot: a comprehensive checklist of known ant species in Singapore (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) with notes on ecology and taxonomy, Asian Myrmecology (e 015006) 15, pp. 1-152 : 113

publication ID	https://doi.org/10.20362/am.015006
DOI	https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15474500
persistent identifier	https://treatment.plazi.org/id/03B68783-3125-FFD5-FD4B-7A9CFC3AF957
treatment provided by	Felipe
scientific name	Vollenhovia minuta Viehmeyer, 1916
status

Treatment

Vollenhovia minuta Viehmeyer, 1916 View in CoL stat. n.

Vollenhovia brevicornis var. minuta Viehmeyer, 1916: 129 View in CoL (w.)

Subspecies of Vollenhovia brevicornis View in CoL : Emery, 1922: 164; Ettershank, 1966: 149; Bolton, 1995: 423.

Material examined. Males and workers, Mandai forest, 7 Jun 2018, W. Wang leg., WW-SG18-002, ZRC _ ENT00027960 View Materials ; Nee Soon forest , 7 Jan 2015, W. Wang leg., ZRC _ ENT00000998 View Materials ; Upper Thomson Road , 9 Dec 2017, W. Wang leg., WW-SG17- Voll 1, ZRC _ ENT00000963 View Materials ; same locality as previous, 11 Oct 2016, G.W. Yong leg., ZRC _ ENT00048027 View Materials ; queen, Upper Thomson Nature Park , 1.38159, 103.81921, 11 Oct 2016, G.W. Yong et al. leg., ZRC _ ENT00048028 View Materials GoogleMaps .

Material not physically examined. Unknown.

Literature. None (see Remarks). New record.

Localities. Mandai forest

Habitat/Ecology. This species was found in old/ mature secondary forest, including abandoned plantation forests, typically nesting under bark of large fallen tree trunks or near the bases of live trees.

Remarks. The type locality for this species is in Gunong Angsi in Malaysia (see Overbeck 1924), not Singapore as erroneously indicated in most existing publications and online resources (e.g. Bolton 2021, AntWeb).

This species was originally described as a subspecies of V. brevicornis , however, it is morphologically completely different from the latter and should be treated as a distinct species. Vollenhovia minuta can be distinguished by the following characters: 1) minute size (TL 1.8 – 2 mm), 2) head much longer than wide, 3) head in profile with flattened appearance, 4) antennal scapes very short, not reaching posterior head margin, 5) mesosoma elongate with almost flat dorsum, 6) no propodeal spines, 7) head, mesosoma, petiole and postpetiole densely reticulate-punctate. The species resembles V. piroskae taipingensis Forel, 1913 , but can be differentiated by its much longer head in full face view (in V. piroskae taipingensis , head is scarcely longer than wide).