Tetramorium inquilinum
| Tetramorium inquilinum | |
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| T. inquilinum alate queen from France | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Clade: | Euarthropoda |
| Class: | Insecta |
| Order: | Hymenoptera |
| Family: | Formicidae |
| Subfamily: | Myrmicinae |
| Genus: | Tetramorium |
| Species: | T. inquilinum |
| Binomial name | |
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Tetramorium inquilinum Ward, Brady, Fisher & Schultz, 2015 |
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| Synonyms | |
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Tetramorium inquilinum is an ectoparasitic ant found in Europe. It was discovered by Swiss myrmecologist Heinrich Kutter. The species is unusual for lacking a worker caste, the queens and males living entirely off the care of the pavement ant.
Kutter described the species in 1950, naming it Teulomyrmex schneideri and designating it the type species of its newly-circumscribed genus. He named it after his teacher and friend Otto Schneider-Orelli. Kutter discovered the holotype himself; the species's type locality is Saas-Fee, Valais, Switzerland.
In a 2015 revision of the subfamily Myrmicinae, Philip S. Ward, Seán G. Brady, Brian L. Fisher, and Ted R. Schultz classified the genus Teleutomyrmex as a junior synonym of Tetramorium. They created a nomen novum for this species, T. inquilinum, due to the presence of a senior homonym: Tetramorium schneideri Emery, 1898;Carlo Emery had named this species after a different individual, Oskar Schneider, who had collected the holotype. Ward and colleagues' replacement specific epithet refers to the species's inquiline behavior (Latin: inquilīnus, lit. 'inhabitant, tenant').
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