Ponerinae Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau
Creators: name: Schmidt, C. A.
name: Shattuck, S. O.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2014
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Hymenoptera
Formicidae

description: Subfamily Ponerinae Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau
Ponérites Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau, 1835: 185 (as group name). Type genus: Ponera Latreille, 1804: 179. Dalla Torre, 1893: 13 (Ponerinae).
Ponerinae is the largest ant subfamily outside the formicoid clade, and is rivaled or exceeded in diversity only by Dolichoderinae, Formicinae and Myrmicinae within that clade. The tribal and generic organization of Ponerinae is here revised to reflect new molecular phylogenetic results (Schmidt, 2013) and a reassessment of ponerine morphological diversity.
Included Tribes.
Platythyreini Emery
Ponerini Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau
= Thaumatomyrmecini Emery syn. nov.
Diagnosis. The following formal diagnosis for Ponerinae is adapted from Bolton (2003): Torulus fused to frontal lobe. Antenna with 12 segments (13 in males). Lateral margins of frontal lobes form short semicircles or blunt triangles, with a pinched-in appearance posteriorly. Promesonotal suture flexible. Metapleural gland orifice without a dorsal cuticular flange or flap. Propodeal lobes present. Petiole (A2) distinctly separated posteriorly from A3 and with only a narrow attachment to it. Petiole without tergosternal fusion. A3 continuous with the remainder of the gaster. A3 and A4 with tergosternal fusion. A4 with presclerites and usually a girdling constriction between pre- and postsclerites. Spiracles of A5–A7 concealed by posterior margins of preceding tergites. Sting present and strongly developed.
Ponerines are most readily identified by the following combination of traits: toruli fused to frontal lobes, frontal lobes prominent and with a pinched-in appearance posteriorly, waist formed of a single segment (petiole, A3) which attaches narrowly to the undifferentiated postpetiole (A4), petiole without tergosternal fusion, and sting present and well-developed. The identity of ponerine synapomorphies is uncertain. Bolton (2003) gave the complete fusion of the toruli to the frontal lobes as an autapomorphy of Ponerinae, but noted the presence of similar fusion (to various degrees) among some members of Amblyoponinae. Bolton also listed the characteristic shape of the frontal lobes in Ponerinae as synapomorphic for the subfamily, but similar frontal lobe structure occurs in many amblyoponines (pers. observation). Given the close but incompletely resolved relationship between Ponerinae and Amblyoponinae, we consider the ancestral condition of these characteristics (torular fusion and frontal lobe shape) to be ambiguous within the poneroid clade and are therefore hesitant to treat them as apomorphies of Ponerinae.
We tentatively recognize the loss of tergosternal fusion of the petiole as a possible synapomorphy of Ponerinae. Bolton (2003) treated the absence of petiolar tergosternal fusion as plesiomorphic within Formicidae, but recent molecular phylogenies (Moreau et al., 2006; Brady et al., 2006; Rabeling et al., 2008; Schmidt, 2013) suggest that the ancestral ant may have had a fused petiole. The phylogenetic distribution of this character implies that Ponerinae secondarily lost tergosternal fusion of the petiole, though this interpretation depends on the phylogenetic rooting of Formicidae and could conceivably be symplesiomorphic, with repeated evolution of a fused petiole in other poneroid lineages.
Discussion. Ponerinae has had a more convoluted taxonomic history than any other ant subfamily. First appearing as a group of Formicidae under the name Ponérites (Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau, 1835), Ponerinae gradually came to represent an assemblage of ant taxa that were highly divergent but nonetheless placed together due to their relatively simple social organizations and shared morphological characters (such as tergosternal fusion of A3 and A4; Baroni Urbani et al., 1992; Ward, 1994). At various times Ponerinae has included taxa that are now considered to represent eight distinct subfamilies: Amblyoponinae, Proceratiinae, Paraponerinae, Ectatomminae, Heteroponerinae, Aenictogitoninae, Cerapachyinae, and Ponerinae itself (Bolton, 2003). Cerapachyinae and Aenictogitoninae were removed from Ponerinae by Bolton (1990) and Baroni Urbani et al. (1992), respectively, but the remaining taxa continued to be included in Ponerinae until Bolton (2003) finally recognized the symplesiomorphic nature of the defining “ponerine” traits, and took the important step of breaking Ponerinae into its component subfamilies. Subsequent molecular studies (Saux et al., 2004; Moreau et al., 2006; Brady et al., 2006; Schmidt, 2013) have confirmed most aspects of Bolton’s reclassification at the subfamily and tribe levels, with some notable exceptions: Apomyrminae has been shown to be a junior synonym of Amblyoponinae (Saux et al., 2004), and Thaumatomyrmecini is now known to be a junior synonym of Ponerini (Brady et al., 2006; Schmidt, 2013). With the changes made in the present study, the taxonomy of Ponerinae is finally brought to relative stability, though with some additional genus-level changes likely to come in the future. The major issues in ponerine taxonomy are now generally resolved: the monophyly of Ponerinae (sensu Bolton, 2003), the monophyly of Ponerini if Thaumatomyrmex is included, and the non-monophyly of Pachycondyla.
description: Published as part of Schmidt, C. A. & Shattuck, S. O., 2014, The Higher Classification of the Ant Subfamily Ponerinae (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), with a Review of Ponerine Ecology and Behavior, pp. 1-242 in Zootaxa 3817 (1) on pages 46-47, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.3817.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/10086256