''Zatania electra'' is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

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 ...

in the subfamily

Formicinae The Formicinae are a subfamily within the Formicidae containing ants of moderate evolutionary development. Formicines retain some primitive features, such as the presence of cocoons around pupae, the presence of ocelli in workers, and littl ...

known from three possibly

Miocene The Miocene ( ) is the first epoch (geology), geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and mea ...

fossils found on

Hispaniola Hispaniola (, also ) is an island between Geography of Cuba, Cuba and Geography of Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico in the Greater Antilles of the Caribbean. Hispaniola is the most populous island in the West Indies, and the second-largest by List of C ...

. ''Z. electra'' is one of several ''

Zatania ''Zatania'' is a genus of ants in the subfamily Formicinae. The genus is known from Central America and the Greater Antilles The Greater Antilles is a grouping of the larger islands in the Caribbean Sea, including Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Ric ...

'' species found in the

Greater Antilles The Greater Antilles is a grouping of the larger islands in the Caribbean Sea, including Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica, together with Navassa Island and the Cayman Islands. Seven island states share the region of the Greater Antille ...

History and classification

''Zatania electra'' is known from a group of three fossil insects which are entombed in pieces of

Dominican amber Dominican amber is amber from the Dominican Republic derived from resin of the extinct tree '' Hymenaea protera''. Dominican amber differentiates itself from Baltic amber by being nearly always transparent, and it has a higher number of fossil in ...

. The amber was produced by the extinct '' Hymenaea protera'', which formerly grew on

, across northern South America, and up to southern Mexico. The specimen was collected from an undetermined amber mine in fossil-bearing rocks of the

Cordillera Septentrional The Cordillera Septentrional is a mountain range that runs parallel to the north coast of the Dominican Republic, with extensions to the northwest as Tortuga island in Haiti, and to the southeast through lowlands to where it rises as the Sierra d ...

mountains of northern

Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles of the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean. It shares a Maritime boundary, maritime border with Puerto Rico to the east and ...

. The amber dates from the

Burdigalian The Burdigalian is, in the geologic timescale, an age (geology), age or stage (stratigraphy), stage in the early Miocene. It spans the time between 20.43 ± 0.05 annum, Ma and 15.97 ± 0.05 Ma (million years ago). Preceded by the Aquitanian (sta ...

stage of the Miocene, based on studying the associated fossil

foraminifera Foraminifera ( ; Latin for "hole bearers"; informally called "forams") are unicellular organism, single-celled organisms, members of a phylum or class (biology), class of Rhizarian protists characterized by streaming granular Ectoplasm (cell bio ...

, and may be as old as the Middle

Eocene The Eocene ( ) is a geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (Ma). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period (geology), Period in the modern Cenozoic Era (geology), Era. The name ''Eocene'' comes ...

, based on the associated fossil coccoliths. This age range is due to the host rock being secondary deposits for the amber, and the Miocene as the age range is only the youngest that it might be. At the time of description, the

holotype A holotype (Latin: ''holotypus'') is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of s ...

worker and

paratype In zoology and botany, a paratype is a specimen of an organism that helps define what the scientific name of a species and other taxon actually represents, but it is not the holotype (and in botany is also neither an isotype (biology), isotype ...

male were preserved in the

American Museum of Natural History The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Located in Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 21 interconn ...

collections while the paratype worker was part of the

Museum of Comparative Zoology The Museum of Comparative Zoology (formally the Agassiz Museum of Comparative Zoology and often abbreviated to MCZ) is a zoology museum located on the grounds of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is one of three natural-history r ...

collections. The trio of ant fossils were first studied by entomologists John Lapolla, Robert Kallal, and Seán Brady with their 2012 type description of the new species being published in the journal ''

Systematic Entomology ''Systematic Entomology'' is a scientific journal covering the field of systematic entomology, published by the Royal Entomological Society of London. Having begun in 1932 as '' Proceedings of the Royal Entomological Society of London, Series B: ...

''. The

specific epithet In Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin gramm ...

''electra'' is derived from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

word ''electra'' which means "amber", referencing the species preservation in amber.

Description

The coloration of both the workers and the males are hard to determine, being either a uniform reddish or dark brown. There are upright standing setae on the gaster, notum,

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 ...

, head and scapes, but it is hard to determine if fine pubescence is present on the head or antennae. The head is an elongate oval in outline with the rear corners rounded and indistinct. The eyes are small and notably convex while the mandibles have five possible teeth. The basal segment of the antennae, the scape, is elongated, reaching back past the rear margin of the head. The males have a slightly rectangular heads that are wider than long, and dominated on each side by convex large compound eyes. The mandibles have large apical teeth and possibly small denticles, similar to males of the living species '' Zatania gibberosa''. As in the workers, the antennae have elongated scapes that extend beyond the rear margin of the head and have short setae on them. The genitalia are similar to the species ''

Zatania cisipa ''Zatania'' is a genus of ants in the subfamily Formicinae. The genus is known from Central America and the Greater Antilles. The generic name is derived from Greek ''za'', "very", ''tany'', "long", referencing its elongated body features. Spec ...

'' and '' Zatania gloriosa'', having narrow long parameres.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q20720629 Formicinae Hymenoptera of North America Insects described in 2012 Fossil ant taxa