The Carl and Marian Rettenmeyer Army Ant Guest Collection has four main sections: (1) army ants (Dorylinae) that are voucher specimens for over 1,200 different colonies (2) the so-called “guests” of the army ants and (3) photographs documenting the collections. The collections are primarily from Kansas, Costa Rica, Panama and Ecuador. The army ant collection includes about 2,000,000 specimens of about 114 species. The 92,000 specimens of guests represent 187 species and comprise about 12,000 pinned specimens, 10,000 vials, and 5048 microscope slides, and include 989 types. The ants and guests are documented in 5,000 Kodachrome slides and about 30 hours of digital videotape. Currently all the inventories are being revised.

Army Ant Research

Furthermore, Carl Rettenmeyer’s professional correspondence with the National Science Foundation and colleagues, as well as additional personal and professional trip notes, some while leading groups on trips (Galápagos) and some notes from “collecting” field trips (Panama) is archived at the Dodd Center.

The motivation for this project comes from the donation of the Carl W. and Marian E. Rettenmeyer Army Ant Guest Collection (AAGC) to UConn and its transfer to the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology’s state-of-the-art Biodiversity Research Collection Facility (BRCF). This amazing collection is the result of over 50 years of fieldwork by the Rettenmeyers in Central and South America.