New Finds of the Fossil Ant Genus Prionomyrmex Mayr (Hymenoptera, Formicidae, Myrmeciinae) in Late Eocene European Amber
- PDF / 2,005,570 Bytes
- 10 Pages / 612 x 792 pts (letter) Page_size
- 74 Downloads / 203 Views
Finds of the Fossil Ant Genus Prionomyrmex Mayr (Hymenoptera, Formicidae, Myrmeciinae) in Late Eocene European Amber A. G. Radchenkoa, * and E. E. Perkovskya, b, ** aSchmalhausen b
Institute of Zoology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kiev, Ukraine Borissiak Paleontological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia *e-mail: [email protected] **e-mail: [email protected] Received November 26, 2019; revised January 24, 2020; accepted February 3, 2020
Abstract—A new species of the fossil genus Prionomyrmex, P. gusakovi sp. nov., represented by three workers from Baltic amber (Late Eocene, Priabonian, 33.9–37.2 Mya), is described. Prionomyrmex longiceps Mayr was first identified in the coeval Rovno amber from Ukraine. The differences between the species described and other known species of the genus are presented. The main problems of evolution and systematics of the extinct representatives of the subfamily Myrmeciinae are discussed. Keywords: ants, Formicidae, Prionomyrmex gusakovi sp. nov., paleontology, Baltic, Bitterfeld, and Rovno ambers, systematics, evolution DOI: 10.1134/S0031030120060088
INTRODUCTION The extinct ant genus Prionomyrmex was established by Mayr (1868), based on P. longiceps Mayr, 1868, represented by a single worker from Baltic amber. Later, Wheeler (1915) studied nine Prionomyrmex workers from the Baltic amber (but not the holotype!), reported additional important diagnostic features of this genus, and first described the male (a single specimen without the abdomen), which he identified as P. longiceps. Unfortunately, all the material mentioned above was destroyed during World War II. The genus was considered monotypic until the end of the 20th century, but then Baroni Urbani (2000) described P. janzeni, a new species from Baltic amber, which is very close to P. longiceps and differing from the latter mainly by the absence of erect setae on the scape. Finally, Dlussky (2012) recently described a new species, P. wappleri, represented by an imprint from the Upper Oligocene Rott fossil locality in Germany, and a large (approximately 20 mm long) Myrmeciinae worker, which has not yet been described, was recorded from the Early Eocene Oise amber (France) (Aria et al., 2011; La Polla et al., 2013). Prionomyrmex was first assigned to the subfamily Ponerinae (Mayr, 1868). Wheeler (1915) also regarded this genus as a representative of Ponerinae, but assigned it to a new tribe, Prionomyrmicini (sic!), even though Emery (1877) earlier placed this species into the “group” Myrmeciidae. Brown (1954) transferred
the tribe Prionomyrmecini to the subfamily Myrmeciinae, but Baroni Urbani (2000) raised the tribe Prionomyrmecini to a subfamily level and synonymized the generic name Nothomyrmecia Clark, 1934 with Prionomyrmex, so that he regarded the name of the subfamily Nothomyrmeciinae as a junior synonym of Prionomyrmecinae. Dlussky and Perfilieva (2003) as well as Ward and Brady (2003) independently transferred Prionomyrmex back to Myrmeciinae and resurrected the name Nothomyrmecia from sy
Data Loading...
