Pachycondyla

Last updated

Pachycondyla
Temporal range: Lutetian-Present
Pachycondyla harpax casent0178183 profile 1.jpg
Pachycondyla harpax worker
Scientific classification OOjs UI icon edit-ltr.svg
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Hymenoptera
Family: Formicidae
Subfamily: Ponerinae
Tribe: Ponerini
Alliance: Pachycondyla genus group
Genus: Pachycondyla
Smith, 1858
Type species
Formica crassinoda
Latreille, 1802
Diversity [1]
37 species

Pachycondyla is a ponerine genus of ants found in the Neotropics.

Contents

Distribution

Pachycondyla is currently distributed from southern United States to northern Argentina, [1] but some fossil species (e.g. P. eocenica and P. lutzi ) are found in Europe.

Species

The genus formerly contained hundreds of species, most of them belonging to at the time junior synonyms of Pachycondyla. While revising the ponerines, Schmidt & Shattuck (2014) revived many of the former synonyms, leaving only eleven species in Pachycondyla. They were not able to place some species with certainty, and left more than twenty species incertae sedis in Pachycondyla, acknowledging that "this placement is undoubtedly incorrect". [1]

incertae sedis

P. eocenica holotype Pachycondyla eocenica SMFMEI10889.jpg
P. eocenica holotype

References

  1. 1 2 3 Schmidt, C. A.; Shattuck, S. O. (2014). "The Higher Classification of the Ant Subfamily Ponerinae (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), with a Review of Ponerine Ecology and Behavior". Zootaxa . 3817 (1): 1–242. doi:10.11646/zootaxa.3817.1.1. PMID   24943802.
  2. 1 2 3 Dlussky, G. M.; Rasnitsyn, A. P.; Perfilieva, K. S. (2015). "The ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) of Bol'shaya Svetlovodnaya (late Eocene of Sikhote-Alin, Russian far east)". Caucasian Entomological Bulletin. 11 (1): 131–152. doi: 10.23885/1814-3326-2015-11-1-131-152 .