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A LIGHT-TRAPPED ANT, DOLICHODERUS BISPINOSUS (FORMICIDAE) WITH EVIDENCE OF STYLOPIZATION BY MALE CAENOCHOLAX FENYESI WALOFFI (STREPSIPTERA: MYRMECOLACIDAE) FROM MEXICO

Most Strepsiptera (Insecta) are collected as free-living adult males from light or Malaise traps. The family Myrmecolacidae is exclusively night flying, and light-trapped Strepsiptera are typically adult male members of this family (Kathirithamby, unpublished). Of the 113 species of Myrmecolacidae described thus far (Kathirithamby 2006), only 6 have been found and definitely associated with their ant hosts (Kathirithamby and Johnston 2004; Kathirithamby, unpublished). The sexes in Myrmecolacidae have different hosts: males parasitize ants and females orthopterans (Ogloblin 1939; Kathirithamby and Hamilton 1972). Only two stylopised ants had been discovered so far outside their nests (Westwood 1861; Ogloblin 1939). Ogloblin (1939) indicated that the behavior of ants is altered when stylopized stating that they: “change their nocturnal habits, acquiring positive phototropism, but evidently lose their social instincts, abandoning their nests and rambling singly, often climbing high on grass and bushes.” Westwood (1861) notes “...a species of ant, which had ascended a tuft of grass on an extensive pattena (sic), or meadow, the parasite making its exit back to back from the ant.” It was therefore assumed that stylopized ants abandoned the nest, thus explaining why they are rarely found: “The myrmecologists used, almost without exception, a special method of only collecting the ants in their nests, in order to get all forms of polymorphic colonies, mostly progeny of a single or of a few females. This method gave the students of ants little chance to meet stylopized specimens which evidently abandon the nest soon after the male parasites extert their puparium” (Ogloblin 1939). However, if this was what was happening, stylopized ants would be more frequently encountered because ants Volume 118, Number 3, May and June 2007 279