Ant Wings

The evolution of Wing Venation

Perfilieva (2015) - The fore wings of Myrmeciinae have a full set of closed cells and the distally positioned cross-veins while the hind wings possess secondary hamuli and a full set of free longitudinal branches. Wings with a similar venation type can be found in Pseudomyrmecinae, some Dolichoderinae, and the poneromorph subfamilies. The recent Myrmeciinae can be reliably differentiated from the representatives of Pseudomyrmecinae and Dolichoderinae having wings of the same type by some venation traits, namely the proximal position of cross-vein cu-a and the size and shape of the radiomedial cell.

The analysis has shown that the wings of the recent and Paleogene Myrmeciinae have different complexes of diagnostic characters. The recent Myrmeciinae differ well from the recent Poneromorpha in the wing venation characters, whereas some characters of the Paleogene myrmeciines overlap with those of the recent Myrmeciinae and, to a greater extent, those of Poneromorpha, i.e., their venation is of the intermediate kind. Changes in the venation of the recent Myrmeciinae and Poneromorpha mostly have a progressive nature (the basal shift) but they involve different zones of the wing, resulting in divergence of characters. It may be concluded from the above that at least some, or even most of the traits characterizing the recent subfamilies of ants did not appear in a single evolutionary event but, more probably, “matured” in the process of evolution. Therefore, the diagnostic complexes of characters for fossil taxa cannot be reliably described based on analysis of the recent species alone.


 * Perfilieva, K. S. 2015. The evolution of diagnostic characters of wing's venation in representatives of the subfamily Myrmeciinae (Hymenoptera, Formicidae). Zoologichesky Zhurnal. 94:1179-1189. doi:10.1134/S0013873815080072