Help:Genus page headings

A paragraph that introduces the genus. Field identification, biology, or any other interesting facts about the ants in this genus.

Three image set of a representative worker



Identification
Antennae are 12 segmented (including the scape) with a 4 segmented club. In side view the propodeum is depressed below the level of the pronotum and forward (anterior) section of the mesonotum, these two regions being connected by the steeply sloping rear (posterior) section of the mesonotum. All workers from a nest are approximately the same size (monomorphic).

Aphaenogaster is most often confused with Pheidole or possibly Pheidologeton. They can be separated from Pheidole by the 4 segmented rather than 3 segmented club and larger body size (over 3.4mm long), and from Pheidologeton by the 12 segmented antennae (they are 11 segmented in Pheidologeton). Additionally, both Pheidole and Pheidologeton have major and minor workers (Pheidole is dimorphic, Pheidologeton polymorphic) while Aphaenogaster has only a single worker caste (is monomorphic).

The Australian species of Aphaenogaster show differences which are little more than variation on a theme. This is in contrast to the nearby Papua New Guinea fauna where morphological variation is considerable. This difference suggests that the Australian fauna is composed of closely related species while that of PNG consists of several more distantly related lineages.

Field Identification
The distinctive nests of Australian Aphaenogaster ants are often the first indication of their presence. These nests can be very dense and when in sandy soils, individual entrances can be large, deep cones or bores (up to 4 cm in diameter and 30 cm deep) with large mounds of loose dirt. This style of nest has resulted in these ants being known as "funnel ants."

Identification Keys
These can be a list of keys, with references, that are available in the literature or could be keys included online here or elsewhere.
 * Australia

Distribution




Regional Species Lists
These is place to provide sources of such lists and can be in the form of a reference or a link to another page (online here or elsewhere).
 * Australia
 * Papua New Guinea

General Biology
As best as possible, a synopsis about the biology of the genus.

Regional Information
Back to this issue! What do we do about providing accounts, or different kinds of information, that are broken down by region? This is one way to handle this.....

Australia
Label Information - not sure how to provide a heading here for the information being pulled from the ANIC database. It is also unclear to me where to place this so it makes the most sense. It can be a great source of raw but relevant data but it perhaps should not be featured in a way that Antwiki appears to be an Australia centric website. Putting this information anywhere but in an area that is clearly delineated as a regional resource, especially for the generic accounts, does not serve us well for trying to be representative of the world. Regardless, Steve can pull two types of data in here: Environments and what he is calling Situations (perhaps this should be called "Collection Situations"?).



Castes
Provides a place for some text about castes (workers polymorphism, queen and male size relative to workers, ?) and a place to add more automontage images beyond a single representative worker that is provided at the top of the page.

Nomenclature
Not sure about the title of this heading. I would guess that Gary will be able to get permission from Barry to include the information from his synopsis here. So we could call this " Bolton Synopsis (2010)" or something similar. This would both give Barry credit and make clear the source of this information.