''Acanthognathus'' is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

ant Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cretaceous period. More than 13,800 of an estimated total of ...

s that are found in tropical

Central Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center of some place or (mathematical) object. Central may also refer to: Directions and generalised locations * Central Africa, a region in the centre of Africa continent, also known a ...

and

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sou ...

.Brown, W. L., Jr., & W. W. Kempf (1969). ''A Revision of the Neotropical Dacetine Ant Genus Acanthognathus (Hymenoptera: Formicidae.'' Psyche 76(2): 87-109. There are 7 living species and 1 extinct species, '' Acanthognathus poinari'', known only from fossil records.

Description

They are reddish in colour and have long trap-jaws that can be compared to those of ''

Odontomachus ''Odontomachus'' is a genus of ants commonly called trap-jaw ants found in the tropics and subtropics throughout the world. Overview Commonly known as trap-jaw ants, species in ''Odontomachus'' have a pair of large, straight mandibles capabl ...

''. These predatory ants live in small

colonies In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the '' metropolitan state'' ...

that typically consist of less than 30 adults.

Taxonomy

The genus was established by Mayr (1887) to house the species '' A. ocellatus'', described from a single worker found in Brazil. Mistakenly, the name ''Acanthognathus'' was re-used by German

ichthyologist Ichthyology is the branch of zoology devoted to the study of fish, including bony fish ( Osteichthyes), cartilaginous fish ( Chondrichthyes), and jawless fish ( Agnatha). According to FishBase, 33,400 species of fish had been described as of O ...

G. Duncker in 1912 for a genus of

syngnathid The Syngnathidae is a family of fish which includes seahorses, pipefishes, and seadragons ('' Phycodurus'' and ''Phyllopteryx''). The name is derived from grc, σύν (), meaning "together", and (), meaning "jaw". The fused jaw is one of the ...

fish, but that is invalid as it is a junior homonym.Ride, W.D.L, H.G. Cogger, C. Dupuis, O. Kraus, A. Minelli, F. C. Thompson & P.K. Tubbs, eds. (1999). ''International Code of Zoological Nomenclature.'' 4th edition. International Trust for Zoological Nomenclature. These are now placed in either '' Dunckerocampus'' or '' Doryrhamphus'', as the former sometimes is considered a subgenus of the latter.Dawson, C. E. (1985). ''Indo-Pacific pipefishes (Red Sea to the Americas).'' Gulf Coast Research Lab., Ocean Springs, Mississippi. Indo-Pacific pipefishes (Red Sea to the Americas). i-vi + 1-230. To further confuse, a genus of nemesiid spiders, '' Acanthogonatus'', is frequently misspelled ''Acanthognathus''.

List of species

References

External links

* * Myrmicinae Ant genera Hymenoptera of South America Hymenoptera of North America Taxa named by Gustav Mayr {{myrmicinae-stub