Lordomyrma vanua Lucky & Sarnat 2008: Fiji image by A. Lucky & E. Sarnat

The discovery of new insects are a dime a dozen, so to speak. I tend to agree with Bernard Heuvelmans that an animal has to be large enough to have an impact on humans, visibly, to be a cryptid. The cryptids we deal with daily are usually domestic cat-sized and bigger.

However, I was struck by the attractive nature of the above new ant discovery and felt it was worth sharing its photograph here.

As the Myrmecos blog (link below) mentions, Zootaxa contained a short paper by Andrea Lucky and Eli Sarnat discussing a pair of new Lordomyrma species, including “the beautiful L. vanua pictured above. As is true of most insects, Lordomyrma vanua remains a largely unknown quantity. It has been collected just twice, both times from the island of Vanua, in Fiji, for which it is named.”

It appears even the smallest of creatures can appear quite interesting if you look close enough.

Millions of new insects remain to be discovered every year. I suppose in their world, there are many intriguing stories. This may be one of them. Certainly, to my human eyes, and the blogger’s at Myrmecos, this is a beautiful instance of an ant example.

Reference: Lucky, A. & E. M. Sarnat. 2008. New species of Lordomyrma (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) from Southeast Asia and Fiji. Zootaxa 1681: 37-46.

Source Myrmecos.