Pseudomyrminae

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 : 103-104

Pseudomyrminae

Worker monomorphic, very rarely slightly dimorphic. Body elongate, often very slender. Clypeus with rounded posterior margin, not prolonged back between the frontal carinae; in certain species of Pseudomyrma there is an apparent posterior prolongation which, however, is the equivalent of the frontal area and is often separated from the clypeus. Antennae 12-jointed, short. Ocelli usually developed. Pedicel usually long, formed by the petiole and the postpetiole. Gaster with welldeveloped sting. Middle and hind tibiae with pectinate median spurs. The proventriculus or "gizzard" is much more specialized than in the Myrmicinae, being anteriorly developed as an apple- or quince-shaped ball, covered with longitudinal and circular muscles and with four distinct, connate sepals, bluntly rounded and finely hairy at their tips, and posteriorly as a very short, tubular, constricted portion which projects as a button into the cavity of the ventriculus.

Female very similar to the worker, also with 12-jointed antennae; either winged, or ergatoid and wingless, or subapterous. All three forms of females occur together in the same nest of Viticicola . Wings with a discoidal and a closed radial cell; two closed cubital cells, rarely one ( Viticicola ).

Male also rather similar to the worker; the antennae 12-jointed. External genitalia well developed, exserted; cerci present.

"The adult larvae of all four genera of Pseudomyrminae are much alike. The body is long, straight and cylindrical, not broader posteriorly as in nearly all other ant larvae. The anterior and posterior extremities are blunt and rounded and the segments are all sharply defined. The integument is uniformly thin and perfectly transparent, though tough, only the mandibles, as a rule, being strongly chitinized and the lining of the buccal cavity somewhat pigmented. The prothoracic segment is large and hood-shaped, and in certain species can be drawn down over the head; the meso- and metathoracic segments are narrowed ventrally, the head is large, somewhat flattened, usually subrectangular, about as broad as long and embedded in the ventral portions of the thoracic segments. The antennal rudiments are always distinct as small, rounded papillae, each bearing three sensillae. The mandibles are small, stout and bidentate, sometimes with a vestige of a third tooth, their upper surfaces covered with regular rows of subimbricate papillae. The maxillae are large, swollen and rounded, lobuliform, the labium short and broad, with the transverse, slit-shaped opening of the salivary duct in the middle. The sensory organs which in many other ants have the form of papillae or pegs on the maxillae and labium are in the Pseudomyrminae usually reduced to small areas or feeble eminences, bearing the groups of sensillae. The anterior maxillary organ has five, the posterior two and each labial organ has five of these sensillae. The buccal cavity is broad and transverse, its dorsal and ventral walls being in contact and both furnished with fine, regular transverse ridges (trophorhinium). Each thoracic segment bears a rounded papilliform exudatorium ventrally on each side next to the head. The sternal portion of the first abdominal segment is transversely elliptical, swollen, protuberant and furnished with a food-pouch, the trophothylax, opening forward, i. e., towards the mouth-parts. The hairs on the body of the larva are of three kinds: first, short, stiff, very acute hairs, generally and rather evenly distributed over the whole surface (microchaetae); second, much longer, stouter, more gradually tapering, lash-like and somewhat curved hairs of unequal length, singly or in a row or loose cluster on each ventrolateral surface of each abdominal segment (acrochastae); and third, long hairs, of uniform length, only slightly tapering, with hooked tips (oncochastae). These are normally present in transverse rows of four to eight on the dorsal surfaces of the three thoracic and first three to eight abdominal segments. On the more posterior segments they are often represented by simple, i. e., pointed hairs."1 Nymphs not enclosed in a cocoon.

In 1899 Emery,2 after a comparative study of the larvae of several formicid genera, proposed to separate Tetraponera and Pseudomyrma from the remainder of the Myrmicinae to form the new subfamily of the Pseudomyrminae. His arguments, however, based on fragmentary material, seemed not convincing at that time; long since Emery himself has reunited these genera with the Myrmicinae and in this he has been followed by all other myrmecologists up to the present. A recent study of numerous larvae of this group, belonging to the four known genera, has convinced me that we must return to Emery's conception of 1899. I have endeavored to show in a recent paper3 that neither the larval nor the imaginal Metaponini can be regarded as at all closely related to the Pseudomyrminae; consequently that tribe should be retained among the Myrmicinae.

Like the Dorylinae and Cerapachyinae , the Pseudomyrminae are typically inhabitants of the warmer parts of the world; a small number of forms enter the southernmost portions of the Nearctic and Palearctic Regions.