Ants from Northwestern China (Hymenoptera, Fomficidae)

An ecological survey of the ant fauna of the southern part of the Junggar Basin and adjacent mountains, Xinjiang, China, revealed 46 species of which 27 (59%) were new records for China. Most of the species are widespread and no endemics were found. A largely boreal fauna occupies the spruce forest zone at high elevations of the Tienshan Mountains, giving way, lower down, in elm forest, to a mixed, but primarily mesic temperate fauna. Loess desert and degraded steppe at mid-elevations and in the foothills are overgrazed and have only a few species that elsewhere occur in temperate mesic and/or steppic habitats. The sandy deserts and poplar woodlands of the arid Junggar Basin have a fauna characteristic of deserts and steppes. The salt desert fauna has a strange mixture of a number of elements.