Sphecomyrminae

Sphecomyrminae is an extinct subfamily known from Cretaceous fossils found in North America, Europe, and Asia. The subfamily contains a single tribe, †Sphecomyrmini. In addition, the family Armaniidae was recently synonymised with Sphecomyrminae and its genera and species placed within the tribe Sphecomyrmini (Borysenko, 2017). See Armaniidae for a discussion of this proposed change.

Members of the subfamily †Zigrasimeciinae were previously placed in the tribe Zigrasimeciini within this subfamily.

Nomenclature

 * † [subfamily of Formicidae]
 * †Sphecomyrminae Wilson & Brown, in Wilson, et al. 1967: 6. Type-genus: †Sphecomyrma Wilson & Brown, in Wilson, et al. 1967: 8.

Taxonomic History

 * †Sphecomyrminae as family: Dlussky, 1983: 77 [†Sphecomyrmidae]; Dlussky, 1987: 132 [†Sphecomyrmidae]; Dlussky & Fedoseeva, 1988: 77 [†Sphecomyrmidae].
 * †Sphecomyrminae as subfamily of Formicidae: Wilson, et al. 1967: 6; Dlussky, 1975: 114; Wilson, 1987: 49; Hölldobler & Wilson, 1990: 9; Bolton, 1994: 184; Dlussky, 1996: 83; Grimaldi, et al. 1997: 7; Dlussky, 1999a: 63; Bolton, 2003: 74, 260; LaPolla, et al. 2013: 618 (in text).
 * †Sphecomyrminae as stem-ant subfamily of Formicidae: Ward, 2007a: 555; Borysenko, 2017: 3.

Taxonomic References

 * †Sphecomyrminae references: Bolton, 2003: 74, 260 (diagnoses, comments, synopsis); Barden & Grimaldi, 2016: 4 (phylogeny); Borysenko, 2017: 15 (diagnosis).