Biodiversity of ants in Mexico

This work presents a short description of the biology of the family Formicidae as well as an analysis of the knowledge of the species in this group for Mexico. Based on AntWeb data and the most recent revision of Mexican ants, a total of 973 species is reported. These species belong to 21 subfamilies which represents 8% of the ants described for the world. Myrmicinae (498) and Formicinae (200) are the subfamilies with the highest number of species. Chiapas (387), Veracruz (319) and Hidalgo (229) are the Mexican states with highest number of species. The analysis of the species cummulative curve indicates that we know 50% of the species expected until now. This result and the number of species reported for each Mexican state show that many areas of Mexico are still unexplored. Also, important efforts have been done to study the Mexican ant fauna, however more work is needed.