Azteca alpha

Azteca alpha is an extinct species of ant in the subfamily Dolichoderinae known from possibly Miocene fossils found on Hispaniola. A. alpha is one of only two species in the genus Azteca to have been described from fossils, both found in Dominican amber. It is the host for a fossil nematode, and has been preserved with scale insects.

When described Azteca alpha was known from approximately 560 fossil insects which are solitary or group inclusions in transparent chunks of Dominican amber. The amber was produced by the extinct Hymenaea protera, which formerly grew on Hispaniola, across northern South America and up to southern Mexico. The specimens were collected from a number of amber mines in fossil-bearing rocks of the Cordillera Septentrional mountains, northern Dominican Republic. The amber dates from at least the Burdigalian stage of the Miocene, based on studying the associated fossil foraminifera and may be as old as the Middle Eocene, based on the associated fossil coccoliths. This age range is due to the host rock being secondary deposits for the amber, and the Miocene the age range is only the youngest that it might be.

At the time of description, the holotype worker in addition to the paratype worker, male and queen specimens, were preserved in the Museum of Comparative Zoology amber collections. The fossils were first studied by entomologist Edward O. Wilson of the Harvard University, who published his type description of the new species in the journal Psyche in 1985. The specific epithet alpha, derived from the Latin alpha, was chosen both as a reference to the early geological occurrence of the species for the genus Azteca and in allusion to the sheer volume of A. alpha fossil inclusions in the Dominican amber.George Poinar, Jr. noted that Azteca alpha fossils comprise up to 50% of the formicids in Dominican amber, and Wilson estimated that A. alpha represented 50% or more of them.