Sclerodermus formicarius Kieffer 1921

Sclerodermus formicarius Kieffer, 1921 The type series of this species is lost. It was deposited in the private Bruch collection, which was supposed to be incorporated in the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales “Bernardino Rivadavia” and Museo de la Plata (Lanteri & Martínez 2012). However, the first author was not able to find any material in his visit to the former, and the curator of the latter neither. The original description of this species by Kieffer (1921) was mostly based on colouration and did not provide enough reliable taxonomic information to get a precise identification. The main characters that are possible to extract from the original description are: head quadrate, slightly longer than wide, and wider than thorax; eye subcircular, very close to mandible, and length less than 0.5 × distance to vertex crest; dorsal pronotal area long, metapectal-propodeal disc longer than mesoscutellum; wings absent; metasoma slightly longer than the rest of body, and as wide as head. Evans (1968) tentatively identified five Brazilian specimens. Nevertheless, this act lacks confidence. Given the scenario aforementioned, we have not keyed this species in order to avoid any future unprecise identification, since it is unidentifiable in the present time.
Published as part of Azevedo, Celso O. & Colombo, Wesley D., 2022, Synopsis of the Neotropical Sclerodermus Latreille (Hymenoptera, Bethylidae) with description of a new species attacking human beings, pp. 501-519 in Zootaxa 5124 (5) on pages 505-506, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5124.5.1, http://zenodo.org/record/6416940
{"references":["Kieffer, J. J. (1921) Proctotrypides hotes des fourmis en Argentine. Anales de la Sociedad Cientifica Argentina, 91, 36 - 41.","Lanteri, A. A. & Martinez, A. (2012) Carlos Bruch: pionero de los estudios entomologicos en la Argentina. Revista de la Sociedad de Entomologia de Argentina, 71 (3 - 4), 179 - 185.","Evans, H. E. (1968) The genus Scleroderma in South America (Hymenoptera, Bethylidae). Papeis Avulsos de Zoologia, 22, 103 - 106."]}