Ponerinae

Harpegnathos saltator

The Urameisen ( Ponerinae ), also piercing ants or wasps Ants are a subfamily of ants ( Formicidae ).

  • 5.1 Notes and references
  • 5.2 Literature

Features

The Urameisen have a knot or flaky Stielchenglied ( petiole ) without Postpetiolus. There is a marked constriction between the first and second segment of the gaster. In some genera, such as Odontomachus this constriction is missing, but these are then easily determined by the extreme modification of the gaster, or mandibles. All female box have a poisonous sting.

Queens and workers are morphologically very similar and show no extreme differences in size. Ergatomorphe or intermorphe Imagines are common. In most species, the egg production of queens is very low and often they put a maximum of five eggs per day. Accordingly, people's weak colonies, which often consist of only several hundred animals that rule. True trophallaxis, the exchange of goiter food, takes place only in the closely related genera Ponera and Hypoponera. For other types of fluid exchange is performed by workers transport a drop between the mandibles. The larvae always develop into cocoon dolls.

Occurrence

The Urameisen are found worldwide, especially in warm areas. In Central Europe originally come but only two types, namely the Narrow Urameise ( Ponera coarctata ) and a very similar way, the Brown Urameise ( Ponera testacea ). There are also some introduced species that are usually found only in year round warm places such as in greenhouses (eg Hypoponera punctatissima ).

Way of life

The social behaviors are not as well developed as for example in the shed ants. Many species found their colonies independently, but semi- claustral, that is, the Queen must leave the nest to collect food. With some exceptions, the food workers collect alone and the recruitment behavior is weak.

Nutrition

The food of the most Urameisen consists predominantly or exclusively from captured insects, spiders and other small animals. Many species have (eg millipedes ) specializes in a particular prey type. In addition, carrion is assumed. Symbioses with caterpillars, aphids or other insects are not described in the Urameisen.

System

After a review of the higher Ameisentaxa by the American Myrmecologists Barry Bolton in 2003, today the group of Ponerinae is much narrower in scope than the traditional view. So many tribes were in the rank of subfamilies collected ( Amblyoponinae, Ectatomminae Heteroponerinae, Proceratiinae ). The genus Paraponera with the only extant representative Paraponera clavata and fossil species Paraponera dieteri was earlier expected also to this group, but is not closely related to current knowledge with the Urameisen and forms its own subfamily Paraponerinae.

It has more than a thousand species of Urameisen be divided into the following tribes and genera:

  • Platythyreini Platythyrea
  • Thaumatomyrmex

According to current general view of the phylogenetic relationships within the follow Ponerinae following cladogram:

Thaumatomyrmex

Ponerini

Platythyrea

The Ponerini it probably is not a monophyletic group. The classification of Thaumatomyrmex is considered unsafe.

Swell

Petiole (insect anatomy) Segmentation (biology) Mandible (insect mouthpart) Stinger Heiko Bellmann
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