Morfologia comparada de larvas de formigas lava-pes

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Volume 2012, Article ID 183284, 10 pages doi:10.1155/2012/183284 Research Article
Comparative Immature Morphology of Brazilian Fire Ants
(Hymenoptera: Formicidae: Solenopsis )
Eduardo Goncalves Paterson Fox,1 Daniel Russ Solis,2 Mˆ nica Lanzoni Rossi,3
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4 Rodrigo Fernando de Souza,2 and Odair Correa Bueno2
Jacques Hubert Charles Delabie,
1

Laborat´rio de Entomologia M´dica, Centro de Ciˆncias da Sa´ de, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), o e e u
21.945-970 Ilha do Fund˜o, RN, Brazil a 2 Centro de Estudos de Insetos Sociais, Instituto de Biociˆncias, Sao Paulo State University (UNESP), 13506-900 Rio Claro, SP, Brazil e 3
Laborat´rio de Histopatologia e Biologia Estrutural de Plantas, Centro de Energia Nuclear na Agricultura, o University of S˜ o Paulo (USP), 13400-970 Piracicaba, SP, Brazil a 4
Laborat´rio de Mirmecologia, Centro de Pesquisa do Cacau, 45650-000 Itabuna, BA, Brazil o Correspondence should be addressed to Eduardo Goncalves Paterson Fox, [e-mail]
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Received 18 March 2011; Accepted 29 April 2011
Academic Editor: Fernando Fern´ ndez a Copyright © 2012 Eduardo Goncalves Paterson Fox et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons
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Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Although common in Brazil, the biology of the fire ant Solenopsis saevissima (Smith) is still poorly studied. Larval descriptions are useful to genus-level ant systematics and sometimes to species-level taxonomy. This study presents a detailed description of juveniles of S. saevissima from Brazil, which were compared with Brazilian specimens of Solenopsis invicta Buren, Solenopsis geminata (Fabricius), and Solenopsis altipunctata Pitts. Different larval instars were separated by diagnostic morphological traits which were confirmed by observing moults.