Although the genus and its relatives have a pantropical distribution, Central American cloud forests are the only places where they are abundant and diverse.

The center of Adelomyrmex abundance and diversity is Central America, and a few far-flung species occur in New Guinea, Samoa, Fiji, Tonga, New Caledonia, and Isla del Coco.

[3] The geographic range of the genus in the New World is (1) the mainland from northern Mexico to Amazonian Brazil; (2) the Galápagos, where the mainland species A. myops is probably recently introduced; and (3) Isla del Coco, a small oceanic island north of the Galápagos, with a highly distinctive endemic species.

These nests were in small chambers in clay soil, one beneath a stone and two in a vertical trailside bank.

It is revealing that this species has not been collected in the hundreds of sifted litter samples taken in the Monteverde area, in which A. tristani is very abundant.

In baiting transects in cloud forest, Adelomyrmex are occasionally encountered, but not in numbers that reflect their abundance in sifted litter samples.

[4] In spite of the relative commonness of these putative reproductives, males and winged queens are rare in Central America.

The only known winged reproductives in the genus are the single report of males and alate queens of A. vaderi, a species from Colombia.