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Strumigenys fuarda group
Strumigenys fuarda group Bolton (2000)
Species
Malesian-Oriental-East Palaeartic
Worker Diagnosis
Apical fork of mandible of 2 spiniform teeth, with 2 intercalary denticles. A single long spiniform preapical tooth arises close to the apicodorsal tooth from the dorsal surface of the mandible (not from its inner margin); preapical tooth arches mesad and passes over the inner margin. Mandible gradually tapering from base toward apex, stoutly linear and short, MI 30.
Anterior clypeal margin broad, extremely shallowly concave medially.
Scape short, SI 51, weakly dorsoventrally flattened and with a sharp, evenly shallowly convex leading edge.
Apical antennomere stout, broadly articulated to preapical segment.
Ventrolateral margin of head shallowly concave in front of eye but without a deep preocular notch or impression. Ventral surface of head with an extremely reduced shallow postbuccal groove, otherwise without impressions.
Scrobe with a sharply defined and uninterrupted dorsal margin; scrobe distinctly present behind level of eye.
Propodeal teeth free; declivity with a lamella that meets only the ventral base of the tooth, its posterior free margin shallowly convex.
Spongiform appendages of waist segments all present, and with a thin pad at base of first gastral sternite.
Pilosity. Apicoscrobal hair present, short and stout. Pronotal humeral hair spatulate. Entirely lacking fine simple or flagellate hairs on body and appendages; any hairs present are spatulate or remiform.
Sculpture. See description of single species.
Notes
The strange form of the preapical tooth, arching from the dorsal surface of the mandible rather than arising from the inner margin, is paralleled in Strumigenys chyzeri (loriae group) and the wallacei group. However, in both these taxa the ventral surface of the head has extensively developed grooves and impressions either in front of or behind the eye, or both. These radically different developments, plus the fact that in Strumigenys fuarda the mandible is stout, short and tapered and the preapical tooth is located very close to the apicodorsal tooth, indicates that the development of the preapical tooth is not an homology. The actual affinities of fuarda remain obscure, which is why this odd little species, recovered from a soil core sample, occupies a group of its own.
References
- Bolton, B. 2000. The ant tribe Dacetini. Memoirs of the American Entomological Institute. 65:1-1028.