''Phrynoponera'' is a strictly

Afrotropical The Afrotropical realm is one of the Earth's eight biogeographic realms. It includes Sub-Saharan Africa, the southern Arabian Peninsula, the island of Madagascar, and the islands of the western Indian Ocean. It was formerly known as the Ethiopi ...

genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

ant Ants are Eusociality, eusocial insects of the Family (biology), family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the Taxonomy (biology), order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from Vespoidea, vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cre ...

s in the

subfamily In biological classification, a subfamily (Latin: ', plural ') is an auxiliary (intermediate) taxonomic rank, next below family but more inclusive than genus. Standard nomenclature rules end botanical subfamily names with "-oideae", and zo ...

Ponerinae Ponerinae, the ponerine ants, is a subfamily of ants in the Poneromorph subfamilies group, with about 1,600 species in 47 extant genera, including '' Dinoponera gigantea'' - one of the world's largest species of ant. Mated workers have replac ...

Species

* '' Phrynoponera bequaerti'' Wheeler, 1922 * '' Phrynoponera gabonensis'' (André, 1892) * '' Phrynoponera pulchella'' Bolton & Fisher, 2008 * '' Phrynoponera sveni'' (Forel, 1916) * '' Phrynoponera transversa'' Bolton & Fisher, 2008

Distribution

Five species are currently recognized in the genus, of which two, '' P. bequaerti'' and '' P. gabonensis'', are widely distributed in the Afrotropical forest zone and are usually collected in

leaf litter Plant litter (also leaf litter, tree litter, soil litter, litterfall, or duff) is dead plant material (such as leaves, bark, needles, twigs, and cladodes) that has fallen to the ground. This detritus or dead organic material and its constituen ...

samples and

pitfall trap A pitfall trap is a trapping pit for small animals, such as insects, amphibians and reptiles. Pitfall traps are a sampling technique, mainly used for ecology studies and ecologic pest control. Animals that enter a pitfall trap are unable to es ...

s. They nest in and under rotten wood, and sometimes directly in compacted soil. At least two species, ''P. gabonensis'' and ''P. sveni'', will also nest in upright or fallen termitaries, but are by no means common in such places. ''Phrynoponera'' species are not generally considered to be termitophagous, but their actual diet remains unknown, so

termite Termites are a group of detritivore, detritophagous Eusociality, eusocial cockroaches which consume a variety of Detritus, decaying plant material, generally in the form of wood, Plant litter, leaf litter, and Humus, soil humus. They are dist ...

s may form a part of it. Individuals are not particularly numerous in litter samples. Belshaw & Bolton (1994) recorded the two species that occur in

Ghana Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It is situated along the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and shares borders with Côte d’Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Togo to t ...

(''P. bequaerti'', ''P. gabonensis'') as comprising only 0.08% of individuals in the leaf litter ant fauna. Beyond these few facts, nothing is known of their biology.

Taxonomy

The name ''Phrynoponera'' first appeared in a paper by Wheeler (1920), merely as a new genus-group name with the designation of an already described species as the

type species In International_Code_of_Zoological_Nomenclature, zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the spe ...

. A couple of years later Wheeler (1922) presented a formal description of the genus, a synopsis of newly discovered material from the

Democratic Republic of Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), also known as the DR Congo, Congo-Kinshasa, or simply the Congo (the last ambiguously also referring to the neighbouring Republic of the Congo), is a country in Central Africa. By land area, it is t ...

, mostly infraspecific taxa, and notes on a few previously described forms. The description of the genus that Wheeler (1922) presented was adequate for its time, but superficial by modern standards and mistaken in several characters. First, Wheeler noted that the "stridulatory surface is well developed", which it is not. In fact, the stridulitrum is absent from all species except ''P. pulchella'', where a vestigial and non-functional remnant is present. Second, he maintained that there was an "absence of any constriction between postpetiole first gastral segmentand gaster", when in fact differentiated presclerites are strongly developed on the second gastral segment but are specialized in form and usually concealed by the posterior portions of the

sclerites A sclerite (Greek , ', meaning " hard") is a hardened body part. In various branches of biology the term is applied to various structures, but not as a rule to vertebrate anatomical features such as bones and teeth. Instead it refers most commonly ...

of the first gastral segment. However, Wheeler did recognise that the apparent similarities between his ''Phrynoponera'' species and two Indian ''

Pachycondyla ''Pachycondyla'' is a Ponerinae, ponerine genus of ants found in the Neotropics. Distribution ''Pachycondyla'' is currently distributed from southern United States to northern Argentina, but some fossil species (e.g. ''Pachycondyla eocenica, P. ...

'' (then ''Bothroponera'') species, '' Pachycondyla bispinosa'' (bispinose

propodeum Propodeum labelled within the alitrunk of an ant worker The propodeum is a term that can refer to unrelated structures in insects or in mollusks. Insects The first abdominal segment in Apocrita Hymenoptera (wasps, bees and ants) is known a ...

) and '' Pachycondyla rufipes'' (denticulate dorsal margin of

petiole Petiole may refer to: *Petiole (botany), the stalk of a leaf, attaching the blade to the stem *Petiole (insect anatomy) In entomology, petiole is the technical term for the narrow waist of some hymenopteran insects, especially ants, bees, and ...

), were superficial and possibly independently acquired. Each of these ''Phrynoponera''-like species lack the extremely specialized morphology of the petiole

sternite The sternum (: sterna) is the ventral portion of a segment of an arthropod thorax or abdomen. In insects, the sterna are usually single, large sclerites, and external. However, they can sometimes be divided in two or more, in which case the su ...

, helcium, and prora, as well as the characteristic 5-spinose petiole node, that are unique and consistent in the female castes of ''Phrynoponera''.

References

* * *Wheeler, W.M. (1920) The subfamilies of Formicidae, and other taxonomic notes. ''Psyche'', 27, 46–55. *Wheeler, W.M. (1922) The ants of the Belgian Congo. ''Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History'', 45, 1–1139. *

External links

* {{Taxonbar, from=Q14447761 Ponerinae Ant genera Hymenoptera of Africa