Of the records I’ve seen, three attine species appear most frequently on port intercept lists: Acromyrmex octospinosus, Atta cephalotes, and Atta sexdens. I’ve had difficulty finding publications or even online resources detailing characters separating the minor worker caste of these latter two Atta species. I’ve drawn up a few preliminary characters myself, based on Antweb images and a few specimens of each I borrowed from Phil Ward, but would like to get them confirmed by folks more familiar with these taxa.
Can anyone out there who knows the attines give a thumbs up or down to the last two characters in this chart?
Atta cephalotes | Atta sexdens | Acromyrmex octospinosus |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| profile |  |  |  |
| head |  |  |  |
| pairs of spines on promesonotum |  Two | Two |  Three |
| gaster with tubercles |  No | No |  Yes |
| head of soldier covered in long fine overlapping hairs giving a woolly appearance |  Yes |  No | |
| head covered in hexagonal microsculpture giving it a dull appearance |  No (smooth & shiny) |  Yes | |
| cephalic dorsum with two small teeth anterior to posteriorly projecting spines (UNVERIFIED) |  No |  Yes | |
| pronotal spines strongly arching anteriorly (UNVERIFIED) |  Yes |  No |
