Ant community (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) associated with Callisthene fasciculata (Spr.) Mart. (Vochysiaceae) canopies in the Pantanal of Poconé, Mato Grosso, Brazil

Ant community studies provide a wealth of information, making reliable estimates of local and regional species richness, biology, behavior and fauna morphology data. This work consists of a survey of litter - associated ant fauna in a forest fragment in the municipality of Sinop - MT, Brazil. The mirmecofauna was sampled using pitfall traps from September 2015 to February 2016, with 10 traps spaced 25 m apart along a transect in each of the collections. A total of 5,066 specimens were collected from 7 subfamilies, 23 genera and 35 morphospecies. Myrmicinae was the richest subfamily, accounting for most of the species collected (51.43%), followed by Ponerinae (17.14%) and Formicinae (14.28%). Pheidole (Westwood, 1839) was the most diverse genus, being represented by 6 morphospecies, followed by the genus Neoponera (Emery, 1901) with 3. Regarding the number of individuals, the most abundant species in the studied environment were one species of Pheidole sp.1. , a species of Trachymyrmex sp.1 and Crematogaster arcuata with 1,343, 1,144 and 897 individuals, respectively. As for the eating habits and biology of the species it was verified the great variety of resources that can be exploited by the studied species, with predominance of omnivorous ants.