Ecological morphospace of New World ants

1. Here the quantitative relationships between ecology, taxonomy, and morphology of ant workers are explored. The morphospace for worker ants taken from 112 genera and 12 subfamilies of New World ants is described. 2. Principal components analysis was used to characterise a morphospace based on 10 linear measurements of ant workers. Additionally, strongly covarying measures were removed to generate a simplified morphological space that uses three common and ecologically relevant traits: head size, eye size, and appendage length. 3. These morphological traits are then associated with diet and foraging substrate. For example, workers in predaceous genera tend to be small, with relatively small eyes and limbs; omnivores, while small, have proportionately large eyes and limbs. Ants that forage on surface substrates are larger and have proportionately larger eyes than subterranean foragers.