Platythyrea turneri

Distribution
This taxon was described from Australia.

Description
Brown (1975) provided the following: This is the most widespread and variable of the species, if my synonymy is correct. It may be recognized by the coloration, in which the brownish red petiole always contrasts with the dark brown head and gaster; the trunk may be brown or reddish brown, but it is usually, at least in part, darker than the petiole. The types came from Mackay, on the central Queensland coast, and they are deposited in. I studied them briefly in 1963 but was prevented from reviewing them in 1973 because they had been held out on loan for several years by another specialist. Forel's original description and my own brief notes indicate that turneri is equivalent to Clark's septentrionalis, described from Townsville, N Queensland, except that the median posterodorsal tooth of the petiolar node (a very variable character) is not developed in the turneri types. Additional samples from Queensland: Gladstone (F. H. Taylor) and the Kirrama Range, near Cardwell, 2000 3000 ft., eucalypt forest (P. F. Darlington) are very like the turneri and septentrionalis types in color and in having the coarse punctures prominent, the median petiolar carina developed, and the fine sculpture of the head and trunk dense and opaque.

Moving south, the next sample seen is the type series of reticulata, collected by W. M. Wheeler at Sutherland, New South Wales. These specimens are less coarsely sculptured than are those of the Queensland species, but the difference is small. The next sample comes from Hobart, Tasmania (A. M. Lea), and is a syntype of tasmaniensis, which Forel had described in Pachycondyla (Bothroponera). This worker is essentially like reticulata, but has the ground sculpture still less dense, and consequently weakly shining, the larger punctures of the head indistinct, and the median tooth of the petiole reduced to nothing. Samples much like the tasmaniensis type have been taken in the area east of Esperance, in SW Australia: Merivale Downs, on tree trunk in yate (Eucalyptus cornuta) swamp (W. L. Brown); Thomas River Station, 110 km E of Esperance, in yate paperbark wattle forest (E. O. Wilson and C. P. Haskins), and a type of bicolor, from Ludlow, still farther west in SW Australia, is still slightly more shining and has a feeble trace of a median petiolar tooth.

My interpretation of this admittedly sparse sampling is that a single species cline exists, with coarse sculpture in tropical coastal Queensland giving way to less coarse to the south, and then, jumping the desert gap, to the lightly sculptured southwestern populations. The species undoubtedly exists at many intermediate stations in S Queensland, E New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia, and when samples from these areas are studied, the clinal hypothesis for P. turneri will meet its proper test.

Additional References

 * Brown, W.L.,Jr. 1975. Contributions toward a reclassification of the Formicidae. 5. Ponerinae, tribes Platythyreini, Cerapachyini, Cylindromyrmecini, Acanthostichini, and Aenictogitini. Search Agriculture 5. Entomology (Ithaca) 15: 1-115.