Mirror turtle ant
Species of ant
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mirror turtle ants (Cephalotes specularis) are a species of ant that mimic other, unrelated ants (Crematogaster ampla) in order to steal their food.[2]
| Mirror turtle ant | |
|---|---|
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Clade: | Pancrustacea |
| Class: | Insecta |
| Order: | Hymenoptera |
| Family: | Formicidae |
| Subfamily: | Myrmicinae |
| Genus: | Cephalotes |
| Species: | C. specularis |
| Binomial name | |
| Cephalotes specularis Brandão, Feitosa, Powell & Del-Claro, 2014[1] | |
Discovery
Assistant professor of biology Scott Powell at George Washington University discovered them while studying turtle ants in Brazil.[3] Powell has said that the mirror turtle ant represents a glimpse of the early stages of social parasitism, before the parasite has "lost much of its free-living biology".[4]