Myrmecology in Tasmania – a historical summary, synopsis and preliminary checklist of the island’s ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

This paper contains a species checklist of the ants of Tasmania and an overview of their discovery including contributions of visiting and resident biologists since the earliest records from 1777 during Cook’s third expedition to the Pacific. Tasmania has about 10% of the described ant fauna of Australia including almost half the genera and nine of the 13 Australian subfamilies. Our search of literature records and databased collections revealed 116 species, including two exotic species, and 25 species that have Tasmanian type localities. Alpine habitats and temperate rainforests have poor diversity while coastal heaths and lowland grassy woodlands are much richer in ants; sampled sites in natural environments yield between three and 34 species. Although Tasmania spans only four degrees of latitude and longitude, there is evidence of a moderate north-south and east-west gradient in species distributions, the latter associated with a strong gradient in rainfall, insolation and soil type.