Three new species of the ant genus Sericomyrmex have been discovered in Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. The genus Sericomyrmex belongs to the fungus-farming ants (tribe Attini), a New World group of over 250 species, all of which cultivate fungus gardens for food. Ana Ješovnik and Ted R. Schultz from the Smithsonian Institution’s Ant Lab in Washington DC, collected silky ants from across their entire range in Central and South America, and revised the genus based on DNA sequence data and morphology. In the end, they turned out to have discovered three new species.
