Revision of the Australian species of the ant genus Anochetus (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

Abstract

The Australian species of the ponerine ant genus Anochetus are revised. Fourteen species are known from Australia with eight described here for the first time (alae n. sp, armstrongi McAreavey, avius n. sp., graeffei Mayr, isolatus Mann, paripungens Brown, rectangularis Mayr, renatae n. sp., rufolatus n. sp., rufostenus n. sp., turneri Forel, veronicae n. sp., victoriae n. sp., wiesiae n. sp.). Twelve are endemic to Australia while two are shared with Australia’s northern neighbours. Most species are restricted to tropical regions with only two known from southern Australia. While the majority of species are found in forested habitats, ranging from rainforest to dry sclerophyll woodlands, in southern regions they extend into drier shrub and bush dominated sites.

Description of a new genus of primitive ants from Canadian amber, with the study of relationships between stem- and crown-group ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

“…To give more support to these findings, I compared within-subfamily ranges of the scape index SL/HL in workers. The difference between the extreme values was the following: 3.5 times in the Sphecomyrminae (between Gerontoformica orientalis and G. rugosus); 2.2 times in the Ponerinae (from 0.53 in Feroponera Bolton and Fisher to 1.16 in Diacamma Mayr) (Shattuck and Barnett 2006;Bolton and Fisher 2008); 3.4 times in the Dolichoderinae (from 0.65 in Anillidris Santschi to 2.3 in Leptomyrmex) (Shattuck 1992;Lucky and Ward 2010;Schmidt et al 2013); 4.6 times in the Myrmicinae (from 0.28 in Metapone Forel to 1.3 in Aphaenogaster Mayr) (Alpert 2007;Shattuck 2008); 6.2 times in the Formicinae (from 0.34 in Cladomyrma Wheeler to 2.13 in Euprenolepis Emery) (Agosti et al 1999;LaPolla 2009). The difference observed between the Armaniinae and Sphecomyrminae is much lower than these values (Table S4).…”

Molecular phylogenetics and diversification of trap-jaw ants in the genera Anochetus and Odontomachus (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

“…Duplicates of several species were included (A. mayri, A. graeffei, O. rixosus, and O. tyrannicus) based on preliminary analyses that suggested they were not monophyletic (data not shown). Ants were identified primarily using the keys of Brown (1976;1978), Sorger and Zettel (2011), and Shattuck and Slipinska (2012), and by comparison to a reference collection (Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History, Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology). In several cases, species identity could not be determined from existing keys and samples were either designated with "cf" for their morphological resemblance to described species or given a unique identifier.…”

“…The genera Anochetus and Odontomachus are the second largest group of trap-jaw ants (114 and 67 described species, respectively (Bolton, 2014)) and are distributed in tropical and subtropical regions around the world. Nesting preferences vary widely within the clade, and include leaf litter, soil, rotten logs, and even arboreal nests (Raimundo et al, 2009;Cerquera and Tschinkel, 2010;Hart and Tschinkel, 2011;Camargo and Oliveira, 2012;Shattuck and Slipinska, 2012). Across the clade, there is considerable variation in head and mandible morphology, and body mass spans two orders of magnitude (Larabee, unpublished data).…”

The complete mitochondrial genome of Siberian odorous ant, Dolichoderus sibiricus Emery, 1889 (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

“…The genus Dolichoderus is a diverse taxon with over 140 species occurring worldwide with the only exception of Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa (Shattuck and Marsden 2013). It is the sole member of tribe Dolichoderini and is the largest of all Dolichoderine genera (Bolton 2018).…”