Dear Reader,

In this part of our virtual museum of natural history we present more than three-fourths of the ant species of Mongolia: 56 species on more than hundred detailed automontage pictures. We hope that you enjoy these pictures and that they may help you to identify the ant species more properly. However, do not forget to use a key!

Of course, we would not have been able to make this presentation online without the help of many friends and colleagues. Especially, I want to thank Dr. Bernhard Seifert, National Museum of Natural History in Görlitz and Prof. Dr. Alexander Radchenko, University of Kiew, for the identification of the specimens. I appreciate Prof. Dr. Seiki Yamane, Kagoshima University, Prof. Dr. Sadao Kawaguchi, Kyushu University, Prof. Michal Woyciechowski, Jagiellonian University, and Aibek Ulykpan, Mongolian National University, who collected some of the presented specimens, and also Katrin Deufel, University of Ulm, for photographing all specimens. I am grateful to Prof. Dr. Kaman Ulykpan, Mongolian National University, Ulaanbaatar, for his kind cooperation and help during the organization of our expeditions and also for the collection of some of the ant specimens.

Here, we present a species list including 69 Mongolian ant species. This is part of a paper published 2007 in the "Bonner Zoologische Beiträge". This critical checklist provies many detailed information on the ant fauna of Mongolia.

A further important work has been published by Badamdorj Bayartogtokh and coauthors in 2014. They present an updated species list with 71 species, 17 genera and the subgenera. Beside presenting a pure species list, the authors report on biogeographical composition and spatial distribution patterns of ant assemblages in Mongolia. This work was published in Asian Myrmecology and you have free access to this publication!

But now, please have a look on the myrmecological secrets of the Gobi ...
Best,

Martin Pfeiffer
(Editor Antbase)