ABSTRACT

South America has one of the world’s richest ant faunas (Kempf 1972), and consequently should also have its share of ant problems. However, except for the notoriety of the leaf-cutting ants, little information is available on other economically-important ants. After reviewing the available literature, a list of the principal ant problems in South America has been compiled for this study. This review is not definitive but, rather, representative. The majority of the South American ant literature is not indexed, nor in what is considered periodical scientific publications, and much of this information is anecdotal--weak in scientific merit. This has caused additional problems when misleading information is taken seriously (Zenner de Polania and Ruiz Bolanos 1983). For brevity’s sake, only non leaf-cutting ant pests (see Cherrett 1986, Fowler et al. 1986) have been reviewed.