Pheidole tethepa

†Pheidole tethepa; Temporal range: Burdigalian, Early Miocene K Pa Eo Ol Mi Pl Dominican amber, Dominican Republic
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Hymenoptera
Family:	Formicidae
Subfamily:	Myrmicinae
Tribe:	Attini
Genus:	Pheidole
Species:	†P. tethepa
Binomial name
	†Pheidole tethepa; Wilson, 1985

Identification

This taxon was described from Dominican amber, Dominican Republic (Burdigalian, Early Miocene).

Varela-Hernández & Riquelme (2024), Fig. 3. The phylogenetic status of Pheidole praehistorica among fossil and extant congeners inferred from the list of characters (Supp. file 1: Table S1) and the data matrix (Supp. file 1: Table S2), shows the twenty-eight morphological characters to construct the most parsimonious tree. The numbers above the white and black dots represent morphological characters, and the numbers below represent the character encoding. Black dots represent synapomorphies, and white dots represent homoplasies. † represents fossil species from Dominican and Mexican amber. Consistency index = 0.52; retention index = 0.65.

The following information is derived from Barry Bolton's Online Catalogue of the Ants of the World.

†tethepa. †Pheidole tethepa Wilson, 1985a: 5, figs. 4, 5 (w.) DOMINICAN AMBER (Miocene). See also: Baroni Urbani, 1995: 13.

Baroni Urbani, C. 1995. Invasion and extinction in the West Indian ant fauna revisited: the example of Pheidole (Amber Collection Stuttgart: Hymenoptera, Formicidae. VIII: Myrmicinae, partim). Stuttg. Beitr. Naturkd. Ser. B (Geol. Paläontol.) 222: 1-12 (page 13, see also)
Casadei-Ferreira, A., Chaul, J.C.M., Feitosa, R.M. 2019. A new species of Pheidole (Formicidae, Myrmicinae) from Dominican amber with a review of the fossil records for the genus. ZooKeys 866: 117–125 (DOI 10.3897/zookeys.866.35756).
Varela-Hernández, F., Flores-Zapoteco, D. 2024. New Miocene Mexican amber ant (Formicidae, Myrmicinae) of the genus Pheidole Westwood, 1839. Historical Biology, pp. 1–6 (doi:10.1080/08912963.2024.2312403).
Varela-Hernández, F., Riquelme, F. 2024. Pheidole praehistorica sp. nov., a new addition to spiny ants of the genus Pheidole Westwood, 1839 (Formicidae, Myrmicinae) from Oligo–Miocene Mexican amber. European Journal of Taxonomy 968: 86-97 (doi:10.5852/ejt.2024.968.2719).
Wilson, E. O. 1985a. Ants of the Dominican amber (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). 1. Two new myrmicine genera and an aberrant Pheidole. Psyche (Camb.) 92: 1-9. (page 5, figs. 4, 5 worker described)