A team of scientists has discovered two new species of a rare ant genus, Myrmecina in Mizoram.
- Myrmecina bawai: One of the two new species has been named Myrmecina bawai after professor Kamaljit S Bawa, a renowned evolutionary ecologist and conservation biologist and founding president of ATREE.
- Myrmecina reticulata: The other has been named Myrmecina reticulata due to reticulate patterns on its abdomen. It was found in the Dampa tiger reserve in Mamit district at an elevation of 409 metres above sea level.
- The discovery marks the first known presence of the genus in Mizoram and pushes up the number of Myrmecina species in India to seven.
- These ants live in small colonies of 30 to 150 individuals under stones or decaying wood. Until now, only 51 species were known that are distributed over North America, Europe, northern Africa, India, Korea, Japan and Australia.
- The two species were discovered by scientists from a Bengaluru-based research organisation named Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE).
(Source: The Hindustan Times)
