Geographic Distribution of Monomorium ebeninum (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)
2017
Wetterer, James K
Monomorium ebeninum is a small black ant with a widespread distribution in the West Indies, Central America, and Mexico, as well as southernmost Texas and Florida. Monomorium ebeninum has been considered native to the Bahamas, yet exotic to Florida. To examine the geographic distribution of M. ebeninum, I compiled and mapped published and unpublished specimen records from >550 sites. I documented the earliest known M. ebeninum records for 34 geographic areas (countries, major West Indian islands and island groups, and US states), including several for which I found no previously published records: Barbuda, the Cayman Islands, St Kitts, St Lucia, St Martin, and the Turks and Caicos Islands. The northernmost records of M. ebeninum in both the Florida Keys and in the Bahamas are at the same latitude (25.1°N), which is at the northern edge of an essentially continuous range through the West Indies. If M. ebeninum is native in the Bahamas, then there is little justification for considering populations immediately to the west, in the Florida Keys, to be exotic.
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