Proventriculus of Cephalotes ants: A structural and comparative analysis

The use of optic microscopy and scanning electron microscopy propitiated the comparative examination of the structure of the proventriculus bulb of Cephalotes atratus, Cephalotes clypeatus and Cephalotes pusillus. This portion of the digestive tract possesses highly sclerotized projections which act in the selection of victuals. This structure is of importance to phylogeny studies and thus was compared with others known species of ants in a dendrogram adapted from Eisner (1957). We did not detect differences among the three studied species in the nature of histochemistry and ultra morphology.