''Adetomyrma aureocuprea'' (from

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power ...

''aureus'', "golden" and ''cupreus'' "coppery", referring to the body coloration) is a species of

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 22,0 ...

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found els ...

Madagascar Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...

Description

''Adetomyrma aureocuprea'', only known from males, is easily separable from the other ''

Adetomyrma ''Adetomyrma'' is a genus of ants endemic to Madagascar. Workers of this genus are blind. The type species '' Adetomyrma venatrix'' was described in 1994, with the genus being an atypical member of its tribe, the Amblyoponini. This tribe includ ...

'' males by the yellowish body color, no mesoscutal notaulus, poorly developed subpetiolar process, lack of posterodorsal projection or lobe on the

paramere Parameres ('side parts') are part of the external reproductive organs of male insects and the term was first used by Verhoeff in 1893 for the lateral genital lobes in Coleoptera. The primary phallic lobes which appear in the nymph or larval stage ...

, short hairs on the compound eye, and vestigial parapsidal line. The males of ''Adetomyrma aureocuprea'' display remarkable morphological variation in, for example, the size of the eye and

ocelli A simple eye (sometimes called a pigment pit) refers to a form of eye or an optical arrangement composed of a single lens and without an elaborate retina such as occurs in most vertebrates. In this sense "simple eye" is distinct from a multi-le ...

, head shape, mesonotal shape, petiolar shape, and hairs on body surface.

Sympatry

''A. aureocuprea'' is completely

sympatric In biology, two related species or populations are considered sympatric when they exist in the same geographic area and thus frequently encounter one another. An initially interbreeding population that splits into two or more distinct species s ...

with '' A. bressleri'', '' A. caputleae'', '' A. goblin'', and '' A. venatrix'', and has been collected within a 20 km radius of '' A. cilium'' and within a 70 km radius of '' A. caudapinniger''. The morphological differences between all species are clear and consistent in each case of sympatric and geographically close localities, even though apparent similarity may be shown to a character of another ''Adetomyrma'' species collected from distant localities. In addition to the above species, the distribution of ''A. aureocuprea'' is

parapatric In parapatric speciation, two subpopulations of a species evolve reproductive isolation from one another while continuing to exchange genes. This mode of speciation has three distinguishing characteristics: 1) mating occurs non-randomly, 2) gene ...

with '' A. clarivida''. Separation between ''A. aureocuprea'' and ''A. clarivida'' is strongly supported by the morphological differences observed in the aedeagus.

References

* * Amblyoponinae Blind animals Insects described in 2012 Hymenoptera of Africa Endemic fauna of Madagascar {{ant-stub