German entomologists Dr Bernhard Seifert from the Senckenberg Museum für Naturkunde Görlitz and Dr Sabine Frohschammer from the University of Regensburg have discovered a new enigmatic species of ant in the Philippines.
This image shows the bizarre eye pattern of the new pirate ant Cardiocondyla pirata (Bernhard Seifert)
The newly discovered ant species, named Cardiocondyla pirata or the pirate ant, engages the imagination with a bizarre pigmentation pattern that has no equivalent worldwide. The female castes in the colonies of these species can be recognized by a distinctive dark stripe across the eyes that resembles a pirate eye patch, which inspired the authors to choose the name of the species.
Dr Frohschammer explained: “on a collection trip to the Philippines we looked for different species of the genus Cardiocondyla that is known for its astonishing morphological and behavioral diversity of male ants. Due to the darkness of the rainforest and the translucent body parts of the tiny ants they were nearly invisible. Under bright light and a magnifier we detected the nice stripe across the eyes and therefore always referred to these species as the pirates.”
What remains a mystery for scientists is the adaptive significance of the extraordinary pigmentation pattern. The poor vision and the fact that these ants mate in the dark exclude one of the most obvious hypotheses that the dark patch serve as a sign for sexual differentiation and thus a cue for recognition during mating.
A possible guess about the function of this bizarre pirate-like coloration pattern is that it serves as a tool to distract and confuse the enemy. The combination of the dark stripes together with a rather translucent body when living could leave the impression in predators that the anterior and posterior body parts are in fact two separate objects.
Dr Seifert and Dr Frohschammer have described Cardiocondyla pirata in a paper published in the journal ZooKeys.
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Bibliographic information: Seifert B, Frohschammer S. 2013. Cardiocondyla pirata sp. n. – a new Philippine ant with enigmatic pigmentation pattern (Hymenoptera, Formicidae). ZooKeys 301: 13–24; doi: 10.3897/zookeys.301.4913
