Euponera, Forel

Wheeler, W. M., 1922, The ants collected by the American Museum Congo Expedition., Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 45, pp. 39-269 : 81

Euponera Forel

Resembling Bothroponera but smaller and much more finely sculptured.

Worker monomorphic, with subtriangular mandibles the apical margins of which are dentate. Cheeks not carinate. Frontal carinae closely approximated, expanded and lobular in front and concealing the insertions of the ant antennae. Eyes placed near or in front of the anterior third of the head, sometimes vestigial or even absent. Clypeus rounded and obtusely pointed in front, usually carinate. Antenna1 slender, 12-jointed, the scapes slightly thickened apically but notclavate. Thorax shaped somewhat as in Bothroponera but with distinct mesoepinotal suture and usually with distinct, mesoepinotal constriction. Petiole surmounted by a thick transverse scale. Middle and hind tibia; with two spurs; claws simple.

Female winged; in some of the subgenera scarcely larger, in one ( Brachyponera ) considerably larger than the worker; in other respects similar.

Male much like the males of Pachycondyla and Bothroponera but differing somewhat, in the various subgenera.

Emery has divided this genus into four subgenera: Euponera , sensu stricto; Mesoponera ; Brachyponera ; and Trachymesopus . Euponera , with a single species, is confined to Madagascar, the other subgenera have a wide distribution over the tropical and subtropical portions of both hemispheres (Map 12). The species live in the ground, either in crater nests or under stones, logs, etc. Eu. (Mesoponera) castanea (Mayr) of New Zealand lives, as a rule, in rotten logs and stumps. The colonies of Brachyponera are rather large and populous, those of the other subgenera much smaller. In the subgenus Trachymesopus there is a pronounced tendency to hypogaeic habits and also, therefore, to a degeneration of the eyes in the worker.