【20mm】Leafcutter Ant Queen Specimen Atta cephalotes? Paraponera

Scientific Name: Atta cephalotes?

Japanese Name: ケファロテスハキリアリ (Kefarotesu Hakiriari)
English Name: Hairy-headed Leafcutter Ant


Atta cephalotes, commonly known as the hairy-headed leafcutter ant, is a species of leafcutter ant belonging to the subfamily Myrmicinae, which are ants that cultivate fungi. A single colony can house up to 5 million individuals, with one queen ant living for over 20 years. Colonies are organized into different castes, a system known as task partitioning, where each caste is responsible for distinct jobs. These castes include minors, medias, and majors.

This species was first described and formally classified in 1758 by the Swedish zoologist Carl Linnaeus, making it one of the oldest classified ant species. It was described as Formica cephalotes and placed in the genus Formica alongside 16 other ant species in the 10th edition of Linnaeus's work, Systema Naturae. Later, in 1804, the Danish zoologist Johan Christian Fabricius reclassified it into the new genus Atta along with five other species. In 1911, American entomologist William Morton Wheeler designated Atta cephalotes as the type species for the genus Atta. It was also designated as the type species for the genus Oecodoma, although Oecodoma is now considered a synonym of Atta.


Please note that we cannot offer a guarantee against downgrading due to transportation.
We will ship the queen pictured, from Tena, Ecuador. I measured her at 19mm. She was collected in March 2015.